If everything is going well in my life then I start to read the papers more and I start to worry about everything I can't deal with. They say wisdom is knowing what you can fix and what you can't change. I'm very unwise.
I'm always trying to find something unique or a project that I can do something unique in. When the director has a vision for a piece that I've never heard before, and they can back that up with visuals and they talk a good game, I get really interested in the world that they're trying to create.
Up until the age of 16, I was very focused on sport - I played a lot of football. Then I tore my ACL and had to stop playing.
I just think of interesting roles to play. I guess that I have matured, I guess growing up and becoming a man, your taste in characters changes and I think I have become more interested in active characters as I have become less contemplative in my personal life. Things have become a little bit more interesting in the doing these days and less interesting in the thinking about the doing.
It's not scary to make a horror film because you get to pull back the curtain and see that none of it's real. When you're watching one, the terror bombards you.
I'm not really a tourist attraction kind of guy.
I had a good time shooting in New Zealand. I almost bought a home there while I was there, because I loved it so much.
I don't really comment on my personal life because I feel like any comment at all is opening up a whole can of worms. I'd just rather not talk about who I'm dating.
Ever since Poltergeist terrified me when I was 12, I can't watch horror films, I'm a real wuss.
Some people have the meat-market mentality, so you've got to take your shirt off because it will bring girls into the theater. When that comes up on set, I challenge it.
When I turned 18, I skipped my party to take my girlfriend on a road trip. It turned out to be an amazing birthday.
I guess I will probably produce a little bit more. For me it's a career, you create as you go along and you can't worry about always being on top.
You know what? I'm really attracted to British women, there's something innately proper about them. However badly they behave their accent is so cute that it makes up for everything!
I think the fact that we allow guns in our country is the main problem with school shootings.
If a girl doesn't have a sense of humor, then what would you have to talk about?
Life isn't what it's like in the movies.
There are some films that really break the mold, and some films that don't. I've been looking for films that break the mold a bit.
People care about my fame, not me. But that's fine. I have my own life.
I think vampires have gotten maybe a little bit silly in the last years where they're all wearing crushed velvet and reading poetry and making sweet love to their victims, you know, it's not really all that scary.
I'm quiet, and I don't enjoy watching horror flicks, so am I like Zeke? No way.
You think that if you are the best actor, you deserve the most or if you are the biggest star, you deserve the most. That race just isn't important to me.
I have a pretty easy life.
We're all on a journey. The average American switches professions four times. I'm lucky to be in a business where I can change the character I am playing every couple of months.
I see movies all the time that manipulate you by playing a high note on the piano or some string instrument, and suddenly you're crying. I'm sick of being told what to think.
I'm always trying to find something unique or a project that I can do something unique in.
You don't stay the hottest guy forever unless you're, um, Dionysus.
If I was painting or writing, I wouldn't veer away from things because they seemed unsavoury to me. So as an actor, I kind of think the same way. I should do things that are different and interesting and shed light on the craziness of the world.
Honestly, I guess if you looked at my CV, I've been doing independent movies since I started. I think that I kind of took a few steps back from Hollywood as soon as it all started to come my way because I wasn't quite ready for the attention.
I just want to make good films on my own wherever I can.
Be honest with yourself and lie to everyone else.
I get quite fed up being on a film set day after day, six days a week. It can get to be a grind.
We all want somebody to come in and save the day and change our lives for the better.
Guys think of love as a feeling, which means that if you do something wrong you can still love somebody. So guys are constantly screwing up and then saying, "But I love you!" And girls have a different standard for love.
It's more interesting when people overcome inner turbulence, but at the same time I do like the innocent. Have you ever read The Idiot? I think Dostoyevsky created a brilliant character there. He doesn't have any self-inflicted wounds. I love that. People don't like him because he's so pure.
Not living in L.A. gives me a different perspective. I'm not so caught up in the daily process of self-congratulations that's out there.
I'm not limited by genre and it doesn't really matter what the genre is as long as the film is going to be new and have some real artistic integrity.
I think guys understand love a little better than girls.
Running around when I was a kid was a really happy time; a time when getting home for dinner or for sleep were my only responsibilities.
I get bored with the same old film coming out every weekend. It feels like it's the same story all the time, and the same visuals, and the characters' dilemmas are remarkably similar.
My parents are hippies, so I must have a bit of hippie in me.
I gave up meat when I was twelve. & One day I was cutting up a chicken for my mom, and I hit a tumor with the knife. There was pus and blood all over the place. That was enough for me.
I'm a lot older than my little brothers and sister, so I think I grew up babysitting them.
I want to experiment; I want to keep growing. I didn't want to just sit back and rest on my haunches and do the things I knew I could do for a while.
What's more vulnerable than being naked, especially when you're out in the cold on the street? I agreed to it as long as I could pick the towel, and I picked the smallest, most floral towel I could find.
My interests are guitars, cars, and vacation. I've been playing guitar all my life. My dad was a professional guitarist, but I'm terrible, which lets me off the hook, so I just play for myself.
You know, honestly, acting in film is remarkably independent. You're doing your thing and someone else is doing their thing.
I wouldn't do anything if I didn't have something I was working for.
I spent my entire first pay cheque from Cracker, a TV show on ABC, on an Audi because my other car broke down and I needed to get to work.
I became popular very young. I viewed myself as just a young actor trying to figure out how to do well, and, you know, making mistakes and learning and growing.
I'm very 'spur of the moment'. I'm always trying to think of fun things to do to create a memory.
When you see something from afar, you develop a fantasy. But when you see it up close, 9 times out of 10, you wish you hadn't.
I never really considered acting as a career. I kind of fell into it. Originally, I wanted to be a painter.
I should be getting photographs of me with my arm around these people like restaurant owners do, because eventually I am going to have to prove to my kids that once I was an actor!
We made 16 episodes of Cracker and I loved doing the show, but unfortunately no one was watching us.
I figured out the only way to get women in high school was not to care that much. Now I realize that you have to live your life and eventually they'll be attracted to you and you'll be attracted to them and it will just happen. I think. I think.
You know, I'm not really any good at working out when people are flirting with me. And I think I'm too flirtatious with people I'm trying not to flirt with! What I am good at is making people feel uncomfortable. I don't want to but it always ends up happening!
I don't think I really understand girls now.
I don't think there's a problem with being a teen idol, if that happens to me, I'll be happy to deal with it.
My hat was pulled down and this girl said 'Are you really him?' I whispered 'Yeah, I'm really him.' She screamed, 'Mom! Dad! It's Heath Ledger!
I don't love LA. I love New York and Minneapolis, so if I have a choice I'll stay in those places.
Fame was initially this kind of blunt tool that was thrust into my hands very young.
I admire when people take the harder path, not because they are masochistic and want to beat themselves up, but because you actually kind of learn more and I think you grow more.
I look for the character to be something interesting, the script to have a good story and be original, and a director that I admire.
I don't like to act in my personal life. I like to be straightforward.
I'm proud of 'Black Hawk Down' because I think it told a provocative story and it was honest. It could have had more opportunity to tell both sides of the story, but I'm still proud of it.
I always find that I have to be emotionally on my character's side for it to be convincing.
I'm looking forward to finding someone in life that I can be truly happy with and relate to on all levels - someone I can bounce my stuff off. Right now, though, I'm not searching for that. But I still like knowing it will be out there sometime later.
Hope is the most exciting thing in life, and if you honestly believe that love is out there, it will come. And even if it doesn't come straight away, there is still that chance all through your life that it will.
I'm not all that demanding, I don't think. My family might think otherwise.
You learn so much from making mistakes, not even necessarily mistakes that I've made, a lot of the time the films just don't work out because it's a really difficult process. And sometimes there's a certain person underlining process. But I've had an opportunity to work on all different types of films and I have had a lot of opportunities to stretch myself in different ways and now is the time where I get to try and figure out out the roles that I can really play well and play them well.
I think that just your tastes change as you get older and I think they'll continue to change.
I've had my heart broken, and it's not fun. But I'd rather have my heart broken than break someone else's heart.
My friends and I make short films. We pretended to rob the Dairy Queen where our friend worked, but someone thought we were real thieves and called the cops! Soon, the cops burst in with guns drawn!
My musical tastes go from Zeppelin to Bob Dylan to Kanye West and Lil' Wayne. Anything modern and progressive.
I like movies about people and movies with characters; that's what I'm drawn to as a person who likes to create these characters within the story, but I like it all, really.
It's a pretty scary time. So many emotions come up and you don't really have the wisdom to make the right choices. You can really screw yourself in adolescence.
I do a lot of weird movies that maybe you don't like and I experiment a lot but maybe I do appreciate the process and I think my greatest joy in this business is that I have had the ability to screw up in a lot of really interesting films!
