Although my family - parents and sister - all work in the personnel management business, their real passion is performing, amateur operatic societies and so on.
It's weird that I've ended up playing so many real live people, because I was never any good at impersonations at school.
I enjoy doing things that involve research because it's part of what I enjoy about acting.
Stories have always been the things that entertain me and make me feel happy and sad and move me and give me the experience of being able to live many lives in one lifetime. It's the best thing about being alive.
I don't want to do something that I've done before; I can't see the point of it.
I perceive and relate to the world through where I grew up; that's part of me. It's what I judge everything else against.
I am prone to get carried away thinking about creative projects.
I'm not a Christian.
I suppose I've got a reputation for playing quite extreme characters and making them quite believable.
Normal people - i.e., people who aren't actors - are the most bizarre people you can ever come across. I'll talk to someone and come away thinking, 'They are clinically insane.'
I would like to be taller, thinner and more rakish looking.
Everyone deserves compassion.
I love watching Jeff Bridges act. He's brilliant.
Part of the fun of life is interacting with people and not knowing what the truth is inside. Letting them reveal that to you is what binds you to people.
We see death constantly on film.
Hopefully, any character I play has an anchor in reality.
I find increasingly that the more extreme are the things going on in your life, the more cultural reference points fail you. More mythical reference points actually help, and you realise that's what myths are for. It's for human beings to process their experience in extremis.
I don't do the whole L.A. nightlife thing.
I'm happy in my life.
By the time you are 30 you are still trying to make your 15-year-old self happy but you are a different person. You need to be brave and let go of that.
