I didn't know 'Homeland' was going to be 'Homeland.' I just did it because it was a terrific script, and they pitched me the story line, and I was like, 'Huh, that's interesting.'

It's successful, middle-class Arab men and women, professionals with seemingly happy family lives, who are prepared to go to paradise for a greater cause. That's terrifying.

I think very few people still understand the distinction between CEOs on Wall Street and the hedge-fund billionaires operating separately.

Television audiences are ruthless - look what happened to 'The Killing.'

An interesting insight into the ruthlessness of studio executives: I was having a conversation with Alex Gansa, a creator of 'Homeland,' and I said, 'So you guys must have seen 'Life' and liked me in it, right? That's the most recent thing I've done over here.' And he went, 'No, Damian. You actually nearly didn't get the job because of 'Life.'

I investigated post-traumatic stress disorder. I've been to a unit where people are suffering from it, and I read a lot of literature. I looked at footage of soldiers in the combat zone. I found 'Restrepo' to be unbelievably useful.

I just try to live my life every day by doing the right thing.

It's constantly fascinating for me that something that feels absolutely right one year, 12 months later feels like the wrong thing to do.

I just don't consider myself to be, you know, an American actor. I don't want that life.

My kids think America is swimming pools on the roof, screening rooms, and hot dogs. They love it here.

I found the hedge-fund guys I met all to be very, very concentrated listeners - watchful and articulate and quick to defend, if needed. They all seemed to have this contained sitting posture. The legs, if they weren't crossed at right angles, tended to be close over the knee, their hands put together.

If you pick up an eighteenth-century play, at the top it says 'The Argument,' and then you have a list of characters, and then you have the play. I was just always struck by that - that, of course, good drama is about conflict.

I will always find a defense for characters, and that's why it's fun playing characters that are morally ambiguous, or are at least perceived superficially as being problematic.

There's a high head count on 'Homeland.'

It's important to have a big-enough house in order to have space.

All you should try to do is behave with honour. If you can. At all times.

When I was at drama school, I remember going to Amsterdam for new year and sitting with friends on the front of a P&O ferry in the wind, having some sort of 'Titanic' moment, declaring ourselves to be the new kings of theatre.

I went to boarding school from the age of eight - first to prep school, then to Eton. One thing that kind of education teaches you is community living: there's little retreat. That's why people come out of it and talk about lifelong friendships forged in the furnace.

I love being in the editing room and playing with tempo and with the rhythm of shots.

As a drummer, you're always fighting for a level that you never quite attain.

I love the idea of using film language similarly to how musicians use music - combining images and sounds in a way that they create an emotional effect.

Certainly, my manager Gary Ungar was the first person to give me any attention and hustle for me. This was back in 2009.

It's easy to show terrible people's behavior on screen, and we all just kind of nod and go, 'Isn't that terrible.' It's more interesting when you can show terrible behavior in the interest of something good.

I like a set to be a happy place, where people can feel free to experiment.

'Whiplash' scared me. I feel you should only do projects that scare you to some degree. I get motivated by those sorts of feelings.

I wanted to look at the mentality that can breed that sort of intensity, that kind of cutthroat, pressure-cooker feeling, especially a form of music like jazz, that should be - or you'd think should be - all about liberation and improvisation and everything.

Practicing is not normally fun. Sometimes people say they're practicing, but they're really just enjoying themselves and the instrument. That's not real practice.

'Whiplash' was always the song I hated the most because it's a song designed to screw with drummers.

The first thing I did as a child was draw. I wanted to make animated movies. I think Disney's 'Cinderella' was the first movie I ever saw. 'Peter Pan' was the first movie I ever saw in the movie theater. I grew up with 'Dumbo' and 'Pinocchio' and 'Sword in the Stone.' Those were the movies I wanted to make.

By the end of high school, I had this fork-in-the-road moment where part of me considered going to vocational music school to really pursue it.

It's interesting when you wind up distilling all your ambitions and your goals and dreams into one single person. It's giving that person a lot of power.

When you're trying to paint a portrait of a very specific world, you're trying to show what makes the world different. So, sometimes it means exaggerating certain kind of aspects, but I don't think it's that important or it's that much of an issue as long as you get an emotional truth across.

I'm predisposed to never be in pure celebration mode.

I would break a lot of cymbals. You whack the cymbals hard enough, and they will crack in half. Drums are not actually as sturdy as they look. They're actually somewhat fragile instruments.

I guess I'm kind of interested in that elusive search for a bond between life and work and between compassion and competitiveness. There's always something at the end you have to find to live a full life, but it's hard to find.

There's something very particular about the kind of rage you feel when you're alone in a practice room by yourself, unable to master a simple thing like a rudiment.

If you look at 'West Side Story,' a lot of those numbers are actually pretty cutty, but the cuts are always musically motivated.

I do truly believe that the smallest stories can wind up being the biggest because it's through the specific that a writer can best access the universal.

The go-to reflex all over Hollywood is still likeability. I've always had a problem with it because I think I have a weird barometer in the sense that some of the characters I've cared about the most in movies are characters that are often thought of as despicable.

I don't think of 'Macbeth' as the villain. I don't think of 'King Lear' as the villain. I don't think of 'Hamlet' as the villain. I don't think of 'Travis Bickle' as the villain.

There are a lot of musicians in my life. But movies came first for me. That was my original passion.

I didn't have traditional stage fright. If there was 500 people in the audience or three people in the audience, it didn't really make a difference. What made a difference was the conductor. Everything that I was scared about as a drummer was him.

There were so many specific things from high school jazz band that I remembered: the conductor searching out people who were out of tune, or stopping and starting me for hours in front of the band as they watched.

I was interested in music and making movies about musicians, but my own experiences, and doing what it felt like for me to be a drummer? Nah, I wasn't interested in that.

I was always pretty decent at fast stick work or doing stuff that seems impressive that's not really; I was pretty tasteful and had good ideas musically. But I had a terrible sense of tempo, which is like being a blind painter.

The greatest thing has been that projects that were pipe dreams before 'Whiplash' are now feeling more realistic.

If you're on the varsity team, the responsibilities are a lot bigger and there's more stress, but you also walk around feeling probably like you can hold your head high.

I love the ending of 'The Wrestler.'

It's a little difficult when something goes from being an utter obsession - a thing where your skill defines you as a person - to it just being a thing you occasionally do.

I actually grew up wanting to be a filmmaker. I wanted to make movies, and music was a detour, almost.