I never met Paul McCartney.

Home is here in London and always has been.

Most of my friends are from the music scene.

Ive probably written about three albums that no one will ever hear.

I'm not an outdoors person by instinct or nature. I'm more of a city person.

I'd always been quite wary of doing a romantic comedy. They all seem the same to me.

After 'The Way Back,' which was so epic and so rich, it was like, 'What will I do now?'

To spend time with Ed Harris... he's an acting hero of mine, so that's a big deal for me.

It’s always interesting to me to tell stories that come from difficult political climates.

You find most of the interesting stories are the ones that are slightly harder to get made.

In the world of independent filmmaking, you're never quite sure what's happening when and where.

I'm drawn to cinema, especially when you're on a project that feels like it's going to be a challenge.

I didn't want the words 'Spider-Man' attached to my name in any shape or form. Especially a singing one.

I could see when I was filming '21' that it was going to go a direction I wasn't comfortable with it going.

I was quite badly behaved at school - I remember cutting class - and acting was a way of channelling energy.

Definitely River Phoenix is somebody that I thought, "This guy is very cool." I wanted to be like him when I was a kid.

Definitely River Phoenix is somebody that I thought, 'This guy is very cool.' I wanted to be like him when I was a kid.

There are times when I feel incredibly loved and connected, and times when I feel alone. I think that's natural for all of us.

I was quite naughty at school. I was always in the back of the class messing about with the Bunsen burner rather than paying attention.

I really dont like the idea of people knowing what I am doing. I find telling everybody what you had for breakfast is really uninspiring.

I really don't like the idea of people knowing what I am doing. I find telling everybody what you had for breakfast is really uninspiring.

Love is such a powerful subject matter because it comes in so many different shapes and sizes. It's about timing, fate, failure, redemption.

The films that I really liked and the ones that really blew my mind when I was younger were independent films. They're like great records to me.

I moved to Manchester to join a band and ended up getting into acting, and I moved back to London to become an actor and ended up joining a band.

Out of every 10 scripts I get sent, seven are fairly generic about an American guy who gets the girl and is involved in underground espionage activity.

When you meet somebody and you have an instant connection - why is that? Maybe you've met before? Maybe you've met in another life? Anything's possible.

You finish a project and start looking for something that might interest you. A lot of the films I've made are a reaction to something I've done right before.

'Upside Down' is a fantasy love story. It's about love at first sight - when you just fall in love instantly and will battle any obstacle to be with that girl.

When I was younger, I looked to actors like they were from another planet. You couldn't believe you could be anywhere near that world. It was exciting. I kind of like that.

I can play the guitar and the keys and the drums. I'm not brilliant at any of them. I can sing too. Some of my friends are proper musicians but I'm a song-writer. I write songs.

You could pick another two people and you'd have a whole other story and that's why films about love get made and made and made - because there's a million ways to tell it and no two stories are the same.

As you wake up to sort of Morocco coming to life, and you drive a two hour journey through the desert as the sun is rising over the sand dunes... I saw landscapes and visual stuff that I'll never forget. It was special.

Sometimes you read a script, and you just think, 'Wow, I would love to go and tell that story, and I don't even care what happens to the film, I would just love that experience.' And often, that mentality makes a great film.

You just try and do as much variation and as much difference and as much as possible, so you put yourself out there to try anything, really. As long as you feel you're going to get something out of the experience, it's all worth it.

It kind of sounds pretentious, but a film I find deeply romantic is 'Buffalo '66,' which is a film by Vincent Gallo. It's about how you break down all those barriers and expose yourself and open yourself up to ultimately being hurt.

When you're acting, everything is there around you, you just have to believe that it's real. When you're standing there with a slightly grey wig on and you have a baby in your arms screaming in your ear, you can go: "Well, I guess this is what it's like!"

It was when '21' came out. I was in Los Angeles and my face was everywhere: on buses, on posters, on the side of buildings. I didn't feel that blown away by it. I was still hungry to prove myself. I realised that quite quickly, that I had to find something that challenged me from an acting point of view.

I've always played music and I've always been in bands and there have been periods in my life where the music has taken a much more front row seat than any acting. For a big period of time the acting work was really a way of raising money to fund my music. And then that all sort of changed around and that's fine.

British actors come at acting from a slightly different angle. Because a lot of the films are cast out there, they are so used to the angle from which the Americans, and certainly the young guys from LA, are coming at it, that I think it's interesting for them to find these English actors who maybe approach acting from a different place.

British actors come at acting from a slightly different angle. Because a lot of the films are cast out there, they are so used to the angle from which the Americans, and certainly the young guys from L.A., are coming at it, that I think it's interesting for them to find these English actors who maybe approach acting from a different place.

I worked as an actor for a few years before anything happened, so I'm used to going up for auditions, and then not getting the role. But sometimes I don't read the book of the film, in case I just totally fall in love with it, and then it just becomes an obsession and you want to do it so much because you've completely fallen in love with the story and the characters. And then, if the part doesn't go your way, it's heartbreaking. So, there's a certain amount of distance you have to keep before you can throw yourself in 100%.

[on River Phoenix] I would love to see what kind of choices he would be making now if he was still around, some of the characters that he would have played. I mean, to me he was like a rock star, you know, he had it all: he had the looks, he had a great name, he had an attitude, an energy, an excitement about him. He was instinctively like a, he was a rebel, you know? He was kind of Bob Dylan to me, at times, and he had a lot to say. And I've never seen too many interviews by him, but the ones that I saw were pretty electric, pretty... he was switched on, definitely.

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