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We Want More Is there any character in film or TV that sticks out, who you really enjoyed portraying? "That's a hard question because, for me, my litmus test has always been, when I take a job, am I going to be excited on my way to work? It's the only litmus test I know," he laughs. "I can honestly say, every job I've taken, I've been excited for the day's work ahead. As an actor, you can't even control if a movie is any good, all you can do is hope that the director puts together a good movie or hope that he puts your performance together in a coherent way. You can be giving gold as an actor but the director's like, 'Oh, I like these takes over here because the lighting's better' and you're acting terrible in those takes… But I've been acting for 25 years, so I'm always like, What's next? What's next? What can I do to grow as an artist? Not just get complacent." When you have free time, what is your day like? "I don't get out of bed." He laughs. "Just lay in bed and I just literally surf the internet of nothingness —just jump from one land of nothingness to the next land of nothingness. I can do that for 10 hours and I find that very relaxing, doing nothing. Then, I feel really bad that I literally don't get out of bed all day. Every once in a while, you need one of those days, right?" What are you watching on TV? "I don't watch any TV really. I haven't had cable in a year. I got so busy, I didn't end up getting cable. I hate to say this because I'm in the industry of television and film, but it's such a time suck for me and I end up getting addicted to things. I'll watch ten hours of TV because I can't stop. I watched all of Breaking Bad in two and a half weeks, all five seasons. I didn't sleep for like two and a half weeks. That's when I knew I had a problem! I was like, I can't ever. People are like, Game of Thrones! I'm like, nope. Even today, my girlfriend was like, 'Hey, we should watch Stranger Things.' I was like, 'No, I'm not doing it, because I will watch one episode and then I will not leave the house or do anything until I've watched all the episodes.' I used to play baseball but I never really went to a lot of baseball games to watch baseball. So, I like playing or doing, rather than watching. I actually even stopped watching my own work. A couple of years ago, I stopped feeling the need to watch my stuff. I used to want to watch it all the time, 'cause you want to see how the project came together.... But I didn't stop watching because I couldn't bare watching myself, I just got bored with watching my stuff, because I lived it, so I didn't feel the need to have to watch it —that experience became more satisfying to me than watching the end result. When you're directing, you're watching the movie hundreds and hundreds of times. There's times when you love it and times when you hate it. And there's times where you're like, This is terrible! And there's times where you're like, This is great! So, it's a weird relationship because you're watching it so many times." Who is on your playlist? "I like The Lumineers. I saw them play at the bowl and they were really fun. So, I'd tried to learn guitar before and it was so hard that I just stopped. Then, I picked it up two years ago, I said, 'I'm just going to play this damn thing everyday until I figure it out.' I still haven't quite figured it out." Peter laughs. "You're never going to figure it out fully, but I can play it. I can play almost every one of The Lumineers' songs. I like their music, so it inspired me to play. I guess that's like any art though. I don't think you ever feel —no matter what art you do— like 100%, oh, I've mastered this thing. Even a great guitarist is probably like, Hmm, there's probably more I can learn with this instrument. Y'know? I feel like once you're like, 'Oh, I know how to do that.' Then, you kind of are artistically dead… If I'm not a little nervous before a scene, then I shouldn't be doing this movie, because it means I don't have an excitement for that scene. When people are like, 'Do you get nervous before a scene?' I'm like, 'Yeah, it's great.' I'm happy to get nervous. If I don't get nervous, I'm in trouble. You want to have that slight feeling of discomfort of like, alright, you're about to jump into this cold pool. I don't know what's going to happen, but I'm jumping. On three, here we go, 'action,' then, you jump." Do you have a philosophy in life? "I have one. There was a guy I met, he was a homeless guy, and I took him out for lunch. He asked me for change and I said, 'I'll buy you lunch.' Brought him into this restaurant, like this [similar to the restaurant we're in], and he was disheveled, he smelled bad. And I sat at the table with him and I would watch how people looked at him, looked down on him. But he was oblivious to it all, he didn't care. At the end, he wrote something for me on a piece of paper, it said: In this lifetime, nothing is true, nothing is false. It's all how you look at things through your own looking glass. It was a really beautiful quote. I don't know his name. I never saw him again. To me that meant, you can judge something, I can judge something, but at the end of the day, the only truth is what you're perceiving for yourself. When you look through that looking glass, that's the truth: whatever you're seeing in that mirror and taking in. So, it's for no one else to really judge." What do you think people would be surprised to find out about you? "I don't know —that's something you gotta ask somebody else. I don't know what people don't know about me. I find that other people's opinions about me are none of my business and that's how I live my life." What are your plans for this summer? "I have a movie in September I'm going to do with Guy Pearce and Ben Kingsley called Long Gone Heroes. It's kind of this paid militia group of five guys and this mission that they're on. Not military like U.S. government, like paid militia. I've never dove into that world, so that's fun. I've just been eating whatever I want 'cause this character I'm playing, Keith, is kinda like a schlub, so I gotta go home and start hitting the gym because that requires a different body physique. I'll have a good month off to go on some vacations with my kids, which is nice. Figure out where I want to take them, either Hawaii or somewhere fun. There's another movie in October that I'm considering doing, but I haven't given a final on that. And there's another movie I got offered to direct. I'm trying to fit that in because I'd like to try to direct another one before the year is out."