It seems like they never say anything bad about actors, they just pump them up.

I just gave up on acting for a couple of years until Good Will Hunting came around, and since it was Gus, it was hard to say no.

They wanted me to do Scream 2, and I hate talking about movies I turned down, because it sounds judgmental. There’s nothing wrong with horror movies. I enjoy watching them. The main reason I turn...

I moved out to LA, got an agent, started auditioning. I didn’t know anything about how it worked. And since I was really bad, luckily, I didn’t get any of those parts.

After high school, I drove out to L.A. with a friend of mine who had just graduated also, and I started auditioning. I got an agent, but it was all ‘Saved By the Bell’ auditions.

I’m not that smart.

People should try eating no animal products for just ONE DAY a week.

I have had a turtle, a guinea pig, a dog, girlfriends, and many sweet, playful, sleepy, loving, delicious cats. I love the way cats look at me.

The way people appear in the gossip papers, as they’re depicted as celebrities, it’s not often much like who they are. The more people I meet, the more that’s true. Sometimes, they’re worse.

What is acceptable in our culture, I think, is really detrimental. I think we ought to have a little more ownership over the kind of material and the content that we put in front of...

My mom has a good way of engaging me in a conversation about the choices I make, listening, being objective and open-minded, and respecting those choices so long as they don’t put me in danger.

I also learned to separate my experience on the set from how I felt about my performance in the movie. Because most of the time I just hate myself.

Why can’t people just say they were moved? Why do they have to say it’s sappy?

A friend – I was living with Matt Damon at the time – went in to audition for To Die For. When he met Gus, he recommended me and my brother. Because the story was...

I have a very bad relationship with mice.

When a performance isn’t working, it’s usually because the actor is trying to do something and they’re not able to express their idea very well. It’s a muddled expression.

The first movie was mostly about George and Julia. This one is mostly about me and Catherine and our love story and our whole history. So it’s a very different movie.

Directors will have a different idea than I have. It will rarely be a perfect match.

I don’t want to be known as someone who is deliberately trying to do things that are not commercial! That is not a good reputation to have when you’re trying to be a working actor.

I once came out of the hotel, and Brad Pitt was in front of me. There were all these fans out there and he walked out. I knew they were going to yell or something,...

I tricked myself into doing this movie.

But when I start to kiss someone – lust is the easiest emotion to generate.

The four movies I can remember seeing as a kid were ‘The Elephant Man,’ ‘The Magnificent Seven,’ ‘The Good, The Bad and The Ugly’ and ‘Mad Max!’ Two of those are westerns. So the western...

People bitch about losing their anonymity and then get insulted when someone doesn’t recognize them from whatever success they’ve had.

For people who have… had curve balls thrown at them, it is easier to digest change and digest change in other people. Change only scares the small-minded. The small-minded and me.

Movies are collaborative, and that’s part of what makes it a great experience. They’re different from a lot of other art forms, but also it makes it seem like when you see the final product,...

I love it: The push and pull, the constant renegotiating of morals, ethics, what to do, how to live… All of us stuck here together trying to sort it all out. It’s fun. It can...

You sleep with people all the time that you hate.

My mom still eats meat. I will encourage her when it’s appropriate to not eat meat. In fact, when we sit down at a table to eat, I don’t hesitate to tell her how gross...

After I left LA… it was like waking up. And so I moved back east and stopped auditioning.

I have no pets now.

In a movie we try to deceive. In theaters, as they say, the deceived are the wisest.

Does celebrity interest anyone? It’s definitely not appealing to me. I think anyone who’s had any real exposure to it would probably regret ever having even entertained the idea.

I think that there’s this prejudice, that people that have a college education are more intelligent than people that don’t.

Celebrity never really served me that well; it serves other people well.

Was Andy Warhol a bisexual?

I get offered a lot of the same type of thing… The teenage slasher movies.

I haven’t seen the movie yet – maybe I’m terrible, so I shouldn’t really speak to it.

My family would be supportive if I said I wanted to be a Martian, wear only banana skins, make love to ashtrays, and eat tree bark.

I didn’t have to audition. That’s common, but it had never happened to me before. Normally, I hate auditioning. I need to stew and think… let the character develop and grow inside me.

Since I left school, I’ve been working on my music career. I would love to be a musician… I wish I could just sit around and play music for myself, but I can’t. I just...

I don’t really care that much about being a matinee idol.

I make out with Christina Ricci… many times. But no real love scenes. I’m dying to.

If you look at the paths of other actors, most people have a curve where you hit it and there’s a time where you make a lot of money and they let you make your...

There were many incidents that influenced me over the course of my life. I mean, how does one first learn about human rights? It’s constantly evolving, and if there was some big-bang-like event, I can’t...

I am in the process of starting a nonprofit organization that gives rescued animals a home in a simulated wild environment and, for those who have been tested on, who are disabled, aggressive, etc., their...

I had a public school education – 3,000 kids when I was there. And there were a lot of teachers who would just sit there. You’d come in and sign your name and the teacher...

I have friends who remember seeing fish hauled onto a boat’s deck and beaten to death.

Columbia has this contemporary civilization program – western philosophy and political thought. The professor I keep in touch with recommended Anton Mesmer.

The first dog I had was owned by an abusive couple. He was very skittish. He wouldn’t let me hold him. It was explained to me that it was because of how he was treated.