I’m one of those people who when I go over a bridge, I want to jump. It’s just this intense tickle in the back of my throat. It’s like I’m on the verge the whole...

In films you do a scene, you play around with it and unless you’re doing a lot of reshooting, which no one has the luxury to do, you deal with the problem for a day...

Unless it’s a down-and-dirty little film … you have to strike that balance between having it rooted and having the people not fall out of it,

I wish to Christ I could make up a really great lie. Sometimes, after an interview, I say to myself, ‘Man, you were so honest – can’t you have some fun? Can’t you do some...

You can be intuitive when you’ve got a more expansive role. You can get into the poetry of telling the story rather than just pushing buttons.

Great theatre is about challenging how we think and encouraging us to fantasize about a world we aspire to.

When you work on anything, you want to find the range of impulses – which ones get portrayed is another question, but you want to have that complexity and that fullness, even if you’re playing...

The English Patient’ is about the coming together of a French-Canadian nurse, an English patient, a Sikh in a turban and me, Caravaggio, and each of us is seeking a resolution to our own problems.

Basically, when I hear the words ‘family drama,’ I run in the opposite direction.

All the time, as an actor, you want to be asking what’s next and where things are going. If you’re not asking those questions, you’re not growing.

It’s really a story that makes as much fun of the body politic as any particular politicians. It makes fun of how we got to this place where there’s a lot of politics in entertainment...

I do know that I like to play characters that are sometimes a little on the outside – that’s because it feels kind of romantic and sexier to me. I really think they are the...

It’s true in the beginning I started playing villains, and I think that’s pretty clear, because if you don’t conventionally look a certain way and you’ve got a certain kind of presence when you’re young,...

A lot of critics are lazy. They don’t want to look closely and analyze something for what it is. They take a quick first impression and then rush to compare it to something they’ve seen...

Any actor who tells you that he makes choices, absolutely, is wrong. You find work and work finds you.

The Midwest isn’t somewhere you mix with those from the performing arts. But my mum and dad would go off to Chicago every so often to see shows. They would bring back the albums and...

I’m a task-oriented actor. A pretender. And I try to invent my process anew each time I make a new project. So I frown on any method.

I am confident only when I am constantly in motion. Between projects, the doubt creeps in.

I don’t have a preference between theatre and film; I like to do both. But I will say that there’s something about theatre that is more nourishing and sustaining than film ever can be.

I’m not attracted to naturalism, I’m not attracted to behavior, I’m attracted to dance. I’m attracted to gesture, I’m attracted to singing with your voice, as opposed to having a natural manner. I’m a theater...

I think on some level, you do your best things when you’re a little off-balance, a little scared. You’ve got to work from mystery, from wonder, from not knowing.

Celebrity is okay as long as you know it’s not about you.

When I give over to somebody’s vision rather than have an idea of what I need to do, it takes me to places I wouldn’t have got to by myself. I’m always attracted to a...

In my experience, sometimes a movie just hits at the wrong time, gets the wrong press, or gets the wrong representation, and it gets misunderstood.

I have no doubt that if I met Bob Dylan, it would be disappointing – and annoying to him. But that’s why I like Bob Dylan.

I set myself challenges every time I work. Ideally, I approach everything as though it’s the first time – with a beginner’s mind and an amateur’s love.

That’s a frustration sometimes, that certain directors that I’d like to work with, they just aren’t doing stories that I’m sort of castable in. Not always, but sometimes I have that frustration.

Corruption is something you face all the time. Avoid it.

I love theaters. I love the event of going there and seeing a movie with a lot of people. I like the community coming around the story.

One of the pleasures of going to the movies for me is quite simply to see new ways, to think about broader ways or to challenge something as a given. It’s usually people from outside,...

The best thing an actor can be is ready. Be flexible, be ready.

I think back story can help guide your choices, but when you’re playing a scene, you’re not making choices; you’re just intuitive.

I was born William. My father was William. I came from a big family, I hated being called Billy. Willem’s a nickname; it’s a Dutch name, very common in the Netherlands.

Film is an editor’s medium. You can create very good raw material and they can make it horrible, or you can do not so well and they can make it beautiful. You don’t really know.

Emotionally men and women are different, but only as a result of the physical differences. It all comes back to our bodies.

I was watching ‘Wild at Heart,’ and I can honestly say I did nothing for that apart from show up!

I’ve been a prisoner and lived in prison for a while; I’ve been a missionary in China; I’ve been a vampire and a priest in Poland in World War II. I guess without bragging or...

There’s a real wisdom to not saying a thing.

I try to do as many of my own stunts as possible. If you keep on taking yourself out of the role you play, you lose the thread of the character.

The bad things about theatre get balanced by the good things in film and vice versa. So to tell you the truth, I love it when I can go back and forth – it feeds...

I love doing action and stuff; the problem is usually action movies are not that interesting. Also as I get older I feel like there’s less opportunities for me.

You have to lose yourself to find yourself.

I’ll never be able to really see a film that I’m in.

his approach to filmmakers and serving his stories.

Film is fragmented and gets into lots of other people’s hands. There are a lot of pleasures that theatre gives me. You get to perform uninterrupted.

I’m no different to anyone else; I want people to like me. I just don’t particularly want them to understand me.

Weirdness is not my game. I’m just a square boy from Wisconsin.

I love Sam Neill. The thing that I always say about him, and I think it’s true, is he’s so dry. When he’s serious, I think he’s joking; when he’s joking, I think he’s serious.

The mask can be a limitation, but you just deal with it. You do get superhuman strength and pumpkin bombs and all this other stuff to express yourself with.’

The director’s very important to me, particularly when the director has a recognizable style.