There's probably somebody out there who has been dying to be Tony Stark, their whole life, and it will never happen. And then, it comes to me because I happened to do 'Heroes.' I mean, I love it. I'm totally respectful of the position, but I wasn't pursuing it.

What I try to do is that when I'm at home, I'm at home. We're working hard at putting away our devices and not taking calls. Sometimes, you have to, but I'll say, 'Look guys, I've got to take this call, but when I'm done, I'm all yours. I just need 20 minutes.'

To do a musical takes a tremendous amount of energy because you have to act and sing at the same time. And everything has to be precise. Because you can't forget the lyrics because the band keeps playing, you know, and you're under a certain amount of pressure.

I learned to cook in self-defense. My wife doesn't know what a kitchen is. In the first month of our marriage, she broiled lamb chops 26 nights in a row. Then I took over. I used to mind her not caring about food, but no more - as long as I can eat what I want.

I really don't know what it's like in 'Twilight,' but I know in the young-adult genre, there are these cold, aloof guys. If you start thinking that's the ideal guy when you're 13, by the time you're 25, you're going to have had some seriously bad relationships.

My mom told us that we should have good shoes, a good suit, and a watch, so I was running around at age 10 looking like a little old man. But somehow I grew to understand that a watch is a representation of myself, of my culture, taste, awareness and aesthetic.

The thing is when you play a character it's the persona you bring across from a book to film, or book to script to film. If I play Frank Sinatra, there's gonna be things I do in a movie that Frank might not have done, but it's the personality that comes across.

For me, creatively, I'd suffocate if I played the same thing, over and over again. I want challenges. I want to sit down with a director and be like, "I've never done this before, but it's going to be exciting. It's scary, but really thrilling, so let's do it!"

I think I was the only person in my experimental film class doing comedy. But my sense of humor and a lot of comedy that I love is quite surreal and strange, you know? You could argue that 'Monty Python' is experimental film. It just happens to be really funny.

Oh, the truth, oh yeah, lot of trouble that got us into, didn't it, over the last maybe thousand years? Hitler knew the truth, so did Stalin, so did Mao Zedong, so did the Inquisition. They all knew the truth and that caused such horror. Certainty is the enemy.

These days movies are cut very quickly and sort of fragmented and I tend to do slower moving stories where people develop relationships with people. I think I'd probably do a lot better if I lived in Europe - I think it's more of a European sensibility somehow.

For me it's always about first impressions. I trust my instincts. I love to prepare if it's something that requires training. But I don't like to prepare the psychology too much. I enjoy the psychology of the character but I work better from a first impression.

There was a certain point in my life where I had to decide that I was going to take my future and Nicole's and not wallow in what happened to me because when you do that, you just keep repeating what's been happening and at some point you have to make a choice.

Billy Beane was a guy who had been devalued by the sport as a player and now is working as a GM for a small-market team.There is such a gulf in what these teams have to spend on talent [that] they can never play equally - they can never have a true competition.

When you are a young actor, you're imbued with the high purpose of your art. You think, 'They hire me for my talent; if that's not good enough, then they can hire somebody else.' Later, you realize that your body is as much a part of what you do as your talent.

We simply argue that climate change consequences was one of the impacts, but interestingly enough, even though a major effort was made in 2008 to try and resurrect the problem over food, now the consequences of the civil war are making the situation even worse.

What I've run into more than anything is people who have a belief that they know who you are. Type-casting happens because people actually write you off. 'You are in this box. That's all you are; that's everything you are.' It's a very de-humanizing experience.

From this day on, I refuse to let anyone bring me to a point where I can't take a horrible situation and spin it into something beneficial. I will never let anyone make me feel anything I don't want to feel again or rob me of the passions that make me who I am.

Are you kidding me? It's insane that civil rights are being denied people in this day and age. It's embarrassing, and it's heartbreaking. It goes without saying that I'm completely in support of gay marriage. In 10 years we'll be ashamed that this was an issue.

I primarily have had my career in comedy, and that is something that I have never been too concerned about because I know there is really no room for vanity in comedy. Comedy comes from pain and it is a lot easier to empathize with somebody who is out of shape.

I always leave disaster for other people to decide, because some of the things I consider to be disasters are some people's favorite movies. And that's what I like so much, is that you never know. Something intrigues somebody and means nothing to somebody else.

I'm from Houston. I think I was thirty-seven before I ever set foot in Dallas, and that was just in the airport. So I've never really been there. Dad grew up in Port Arthur, Texas and all I can ever get out of him is, "I wanted my first son to be named Dallas."

I came up in the theater, and I learned pretty quickly that reading a review, whether it's good or bad, can strangely affect the next performances, because you're reacting to something that's been said about you. So I tend to avoid that stuff pretty studiously.

I'm from Houston. I think I was thirty-seven before I ever set foot in Dallas, and that was just in the airport. So I've never really been there. Dad grew up in Port Arthur, Texas and all I can ever get out of him is, 'I wanted my first son to be named Dallas.'

There are ways of avoiding becoming tabloid fodder and therefore giving people license to pry into your private life. And there's a distinction between being an actor and being a celebrity. You may become a celebrity through acting, but you don't need to do so.

I try to make all my work as honest as possible. I want the audience to feel like they're watching two people talking-having a conversation-as opposed to watching actors fake it. I want the audience to get lost in the fact that this is so good it could be real.

Since 1957, black people have experienced double-digit unemployment - in good times and bad times. Look at the population of African Americans in prison. They represent more than half the population of prisoners in the country, 55 percent of those on death row.

I had no ambitions to become an actor, whatsoever. I was just waiting for my films to get made and some friends of mine, out of the kindness of their hearts, because I was sitting around doing nothing, started casting me in small roles and the roles got bigger.

I have to say that one of the most important things Scientology has given me is the ability to keep my integrity together. I understand how people can get into unethical situations, and Scientology has always helped me keep my head clear and be in present time.

My parents, Arthur and Olwen, were honest, working-class people who raised my brother Arthur, sister June, and me with the values of that era - patriotism, stoicism, honesty, concern for your neighbours, and judging a man by what he did rather than what he had.

[Amy Sedaris] is awesome to work with. She's an amazing person. She makes her own line of catnip toys, and she gave me a bunch for my cat. It meant the world to me. She also got me stuff for my daughter, but I was more enamored with what she gave me for my cat.

It was so hard [to do Gigi Does It show]. On paper, that formula is almost impossible to create a winning show with, but then you add four and a half hours of prosthetic makeup every morning, three-inch nails, acrylics, the whole thing, and it nearly killed me.

I wish that I had gotten a chance to do another season of [ Gigi Does It], to see if I could explore the story more, or the character more, and also find an easier way to make the show. We never got that opportunity. But I'll always be super, super proud of it.

There's a method aspect to Campbell Scott character and he really wants to get into his character and he wants to cast to go on a fast so that by the time the play opens nobody's eaten in three days because he wants the audience to feel the pain from the stage.

I guess I could say I'm an actor, which I am, but that sounds like I'm putting down being a movie star, which, let's face it, is what I've become to many people. For myself, I'm a guy who was very insecure from about age 14 until the day I hit my 30th birthday.

When you look in one direction where Troy's chair was, you could see out through the yard across the street, there was an old cork bar advertisement for five cents. We wanted it to feel like this was real life [in Fences] and that it extended blocks and blocks.

When I was 12, I used to be the best friend of the most beautiful girls, but just the best friend. They would always come to me to cry about a guy who broke their heart, and I would just be sitting there thinking, 'I wish I was the guy and not the best friend.'

I got good grades in school, but I'm not sure if I'm smart or if it just means I can study. I've never taken one of those IQ tests, and I don't want to. It's so pointless. As long as you enjoy life and have fun and you're healthy and happy, that's what matters.

You're supposed to take a second if life is going well, to enjoy it and not just move on with the rest of your day worrying about the next thing. And it's a really trite point in some ways. But it's bizarre how little I had done it at various points in my life.

I want to be a man who is truthful and who won't let pride get in the way of my ripping myself open to my partner and saying, 'Here I am. This is me.' I feel there's something powerful when a man reaches a point in his life when he can be completely vulnerable.

As a runner on a film, you are the lowest of the low, and yet you have incredible access to everyone. I can totally imagine that for actors in the middle of a Hollywood bubble, all they really want is a sense of normality, and that gopher can be a tap for that.

I'm quite ignorant about fashion and I'm colourblind, so it's all a tad tricky. My only knowledge of that world comes through Christopher Bailey, whom I first met in 2008 when I did a campaign for Burberry that featured musicians, artists, actors and sportsmen.

Often there are players who have only football as a way of expressing themselves and never develop other interests. And when they no longer play football, they no longer do anything; they no longer exist, or rather they have the sensation of no longer existing.

Frankie is my baby. He is the sweetest dog in the world. Frankie is like the son I never had. He keeps me healthy; I walk and run him. I always feel that I need to spend more time with him and give him more attention. I find myself unloading my emotions on him.

I'm the spokesperson for the Multifaith Alliance for Syrian Refugees. My father was from Syria. It's an American initiative, and it's multi-faith. So, it's maybe 60-65 different organisations, Jews, Christians, Hindus... Anyway, it's very important and serious.

In film, you're so much in the hands and at the mercy of the editor, so sometimes it's good to watch it just to see how it turns out - it can be so different than how you imagined it. But sometimes it's better to just let it go for your own sense of self worth.

Now Tarantino is making DJANGO UNCHAINED. Everybody is telling me I am in the movie but I've not been asked by Tarantino officially. Not yet. There were many, many other Django films following mine, with other actors and directors, but there is only one Django.

My friend Liam Neeson has managed to carve out a great place in the industry for himself and is still doing action movies at 64 years old. He's my hero. I use him as a template. My middle kid, Liam, is named after him. He's one of the coolest guys in Hollywood.

I don't know why my lines that were cut from the film didn't make it onto the DVD. I have offered to go into the editing room with Christopher and work shoulder to shoulder with him to fit all my lines in. I think he thinks I'm kidding. I'm only trying to help.

One of the first shows I ever did was 'Laverne & Shirley.' I played this sleazy guy that came into town with a friend and was going to date Laverne and Shirley, but we really wanted to get into the bowling alley because it was next to the bank we wanted to rob.

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