I don't know if this is a true statistic, but I heard somewhere that there are three times as many single women over forty as single men. That's what we got from the women's movement. The chickens have come home to roost.

I'd prefer if people had no impressions of me. As a kid, I had to tell my own family, "Please, just don't talk about me!" Because they always got it wrong. Always. I just didn't want them to tell anyone anything about me.

I just know that sameness, repetition, and conceptualizing are the acting craft's adversaries, and it seems more intelligent to start off within a framework where those things are, to some degree, taken out of your hands.

There's always an intellectual side to the films Ang Lee's doing and to the characters, and there's such a deep knowledge when you've worked with the actors that he's worked with, on stage in particular, but also in film.

It was dangerous stuff. We were running on top of moving trains. We got to do amazing things. I like doing stuff like that. I enjoy it. But believe me, there were things that were so dangerous that I wasn't touching them.

I left Chicago many years ago to move to California. You can't help but live a healthy lifestyle here if you want to fit in. I find myself eating chicken and salad and chicken and salad and salad and chicken, like a monk.

I'm really interested with the way light plays on images and one of the artists that really reawakened my interest in comic books was Frank Miller and his treatment of Daredevil, and then Wolverine and, of course, Batman.

I feel old and vulnerable. I now realise that I knew nothing and know nothing, but back when my career was beginning, I thought I was a man when, in fact, I was a dewy-eyed boy who'd not seen an avocado or eaten a tomato.

Like the character I played in 'Jekyll', we all have different masks we put on for different occasions. As much as we all want to lead decent lives, we're also attracted by the idea that something dark may lurk within us.

I'm not eager at all to present my life out there for public consumption. I like to do one or two films a year and then do what is absolutely obligatory in terms of promoting them. My life outside of films is vital to me.

My comedic instinct, is a little bit more rooted in - my mother's British so I've always been more of the dry receiver of the crazy as opposed to the initiator of the crazy. I'm kind of predisposed to be the straight man.

The directing is something that is incredibly satisfying to me and challenging to me because it's asking me to draw on everything I've been able to absorb over all these years of acting and having all this set experience.

Zack Snyder is a huge fan of 'Game of Thrones,' and I met him in the training stunt facility that I train at, and I guess he really liked me because he later called me into his office, and we talked about playing Aquaman.

[On performing in action movies] I've spent all those years learning how to do certain skills, and then that competitive spirit kicks in and you want to do the stunts. Basically, it's the the male competitive ego at work.

I know a lot of people who are very good at their craft who have learned - people behind the camera - who really have a lot to offer because they know what they're doing, they know what to do, they've made their mistakes.

I can't say enough about the guts and the talents of Amazon. They're so agile, they're so nimble; they picked us up two weeks after we premiered, and their whole attitude is, 'Go, go, go, go,' so I'm very, very impressed.

I always believe that most people could do it. I mean obviously I didn't just sit and stand. I used to love cradling the gun and just posing with the hand cocked ready to fire the gun, and the costume helped a great deal.

We need to support the governments of the world to create the world we want and I also think we need to empower the UN so that the secretariat, the people who work day in and day out, know that the people are behind them.

When I'm not working, I don't mix with actors, really. I have about two or three friends from theater school, and we call each other and meet. But in the main, no. I'm more happy with musicians or horse riders or sailors.

HBO spent a huge amount of money on 'Game Of Thrones,' and it won't be able to keep spending the money if it can't make it back from people watching it legitimately. It will have an effect on the quality of the programme.

At a certain point he was very popular, from THE RAVEN. He was never fully appreciated, never made the money, and you know he was looked upon with admiration by some people, but also as an oddball. But that was his point.

I don't like when an Asian-American actor says, 'I'm entering this business to change Hollywood.' It feels like the wrong reason - I would prefer they entered the business for artistic reasons, because they need to do it.

With any "new" form of music, the originators are usually good bands that have good music and good ideas, like Nirvana. But then you get all the followers and wannabes, bands like Silverchair, etc...and that really sucks.

By being a waiter 100 percent, I think I was a lot like any other actor in New York. I had credits because I'd work lunches during the week, and then on a Wednesday would go be lucky enough to be in a movie like 'Kinsey.'

What I mostly do is take the script, analyse the hell out of it, see what's in there, see what kind of person I'm dealing with, and then forget I'm playing a father and just play a person who exemplifies all those things.

Somehow you've been voted something for a magazine, and it's a complete mystery to me. I wake up and I have to look at that head when I brush my teeth every morning, you know. And it's weird. And it's unpleasant at times.

As a teenager I was so insecure. I was the type of guy that never fitted in because he never dared to choose. I was convinced I had absolutely no talent at all. For nothing. And that thought took away all my ambition too.

Being totally open with your feelings can make everything difficult. However, in front of the person I love, I feel it is absolutely necessary to be honest and open. I belong to the type who will open up about everything.

I'm a firm believer in the idea that there are a limited amount of human stories that we tell - there's about seven of them - and of course, there's variations on those stories, and they can take place in infinite places.

I am certain things to certain generations. Lots of people remember me from the 'Comic Strip,' there was the 'Vindaloo' song for the 1998 World Cup, then it was playing the Sheriff of Nottingham in the BBC's 'Robin Hood.'

I think time is elastic. There are moments in my life that are many, many years ago and yet I can conjure them as though it's a second ago. And there are other things that happened maybe last week that seem like ages ago.

Sometimes I used to think to myself, 'Have I lost a sense of humor?' but I don't think that I have. I think one can be as snarky and sarcastic as lots of people, but I have never found that it makes me particularly happy.

I'm a 'what if' person. I have always felt that failure was a completely underrated experience. I have taken blows. I have had high moments. But I don't think the blows have ever hardened me. My enthusiasms are still big.

If you keep saying two plus two equals five over and over again, then that is what people are going to think. Maybe it does equal five if we keep changing the definition of what's normal and what's right and what's wrong.

We have learned the lesson that the music industry didn't learn. Give people what they want, when they want it, in the form they want it in, at a reasonable price - and they'll more likely pay for it rather than steal it.

I have long been a supporter of The Princes Trust, and so when American Express asked me to launch Amex Be Inspired and help young people build their confidence and fulfil their potential, I was delighted to get involved.

I've been trying to take this journey over the last four years of getting away from playing manipulative and villainous characters and playing characters that are affected by what happens to them as opposed to unaffected.

Learn from this, there's a light at the end of the tunnel. Hell does have an exit, and I found it. For those who are still looking for a way out, I left the door open and I'll be waiting for whoever wants to grow with me.

I had never gone to college, I left school at a really early age, and all of a sudden I've got six really great friends hanging out with me every night. And we were a really tight group, and we just had an absolute blast.

There are a lot of movies I'd like to throw away. That's not to say that I went in with that attitude. Any film I ever started, I went in with all the hope and best intentions in the world, but some films just don't work.

Ten out of ten people die. You start thinking about that and it really makes you start to ask the big questions: Where did I come from? Where am I going when I die? What happens when we step out of here? What's out there?

I've got to write about my character every day. I've got to find out where he lives, what bus he catches to school, and stuff like that. You've got to know every little thing about him so when you do it, it feels natural.

When I was living in New York, there was a lot of screaming in my life. I would just get into these altercations all the time. Being in public, dealing with shopkeepers, just trying to cross the street - things like that.

I think the biggest lesson is the common one that gets in the way of most of us as artists - there are these messages in society that if you aren't hitting certain metrics, then you're not successful and you're not valid.

When I work out, I wear two in-the-ear hearing aids for comfort, and then I wear the behind-the-ears for my day-to-day non-physical activities, when I need maximum hearing and to communicate with people and do interviews!

When I first moved to LA and it was the first event that I ever went to, and I thought I was all cute. I thought I was all dressed up, but it was casual. In LA, everything is so casual, so I got so dressed up for nothing.

I have two hammocks, one Mayan and one Guatemalan, both family size because I like to lie in them perpendicular. When I'm working on a character, I lie in them and daydream. They're the best tools for working that I have.

I've got a pretty wide range of stuff that I'm interested in in life. But producing... it gives me a lot more time at home to spend with my family as opposed to being away on location shooting nights for months at a time.

One of the greatest compliments you can ever get is when you make fun of a certain sect of people and they are laughing the hardest. When we did 'Men on Film' on 'In Living Color,' gay men wrote in how much they loved it.

When people asked me, 'What are you going to do?' I'd say, 'I'm going to be an actor,' without really thinking about it. And I started acting without really thinking about it. I only thought about it properly a bit later.

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