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QUOTES

The man himself said ...

An actor should never be larger than the film he's in.

I took it like a man. He was really tender, very caring. He hugged me afterward. But he never writes. He never calls. Goddamn him! Actually, it was a freezing night when we were doing the scene, and it was far less explicit than Ewan and myself thought it was going to be. The camera was on another roof looking across at us. The only thing Todd did was whisper, 'Cut,' rather than shouting it, so that Ewan and I couldn't hear. We were going at it for ages. Then Ewan sort of turned his head and realized, 'Hey, the camera's not f--king pointed at us anymore!' So, I sort of turned my head. We stop, and the whole crew is just sitting there. They'd cut ages ago!

(It was) horrific. I was almost crying in interviews and running away during press conferences, pretending I was going to the bathroom and just disappearing." - on dealing with the resulting media attention of Empire of the Sun at age 13.

I enjoyed making the film, but I was shocked when I received all the attention when I got home to Bournemouth. Girls were all over me, boys wanted to fight me and I was being asked to open local fetes when all I wanted to do was ride my BMX bike in the woods. I told my parents I wasn't interested in doing anything again because the attention ruined it.

I don't want to know about the lives of other actors and I don't want people to know too much about me. If we don't know about the private lives of other actors, that leaves us as clean slates when it comes to playing characters. That's the point, they can create these other characters and I can believe them. I think if you're a good enough actor, that's the way to longevity in the film business. Keep everybody guessing.

When you do a lot of interviews, you find yourself telling the same stories over and over. After you do it for a whole day, you say, 'Christ, I've said this five times today.' It gets fun when you get so bored you start making it all up.

There were times as a family when we ended up in very small places and there would be that fear of where the hell are you going to next, and what's going to happen? I suppose the difference was that it was never boredom. It was never a fear of nothing's going to happen.

A lot of people who grew up in that era have said, 'You were me. That was exactly what we went through.' Which is lovely to hear.

I go from this innocent, very likable boy who can't quite deal with it when Jo rejects him. He then becomes this debauched character who does a lot of drinking and smoking. It was quite nice.

I'm English. Our dentistry is not world famous. But I made sure I got moldings of my old teeth beforehand because I miss them.

I don't think I'm like any of the characters I've played - they're all really far from who I am.

I have a fear of being boring.

I only sound intelligent when there's a good script writer around.

I think trying too hard to be sexy is the worst thing in the world a woman can do.

If everyone really knew what a jerk I am in real life, I wouldn't be so adored in the slightest.

My method can be nothing, or the most intense, bizarre preparations you've ever seen.

What I love about my wife is that she's a really strong-minded, stubborn, fiery woman. I find that sexier than anything else.

You say something bad about Newsies and you have an awful lot of people to answer to.

I love going to night clubs, but there are things that should be done anonymously, y'know? The key is to dress like shit, which I always do.

I'd love to remain a secret and still work, but I also want people to see the movies I'm in and get a higher profile because of that. I like to think that as long as you continue choosing diverse roles, you can avoid becoming predictable.

The only thing that I'm obsessed with is sleeping and, actually, it is more than an obsession, it is a pleasure. I love sleeping so much that I could do it 12 hours a day if I didn't have to turn on the alarm clock...and still, sometimes...

Sometimes you want to torture yourself a little bit and know that you can come out on the other side. There's just such a satisfaction in doing one thing well in a hard-core fashion.

I will never say never, but I will say never to doing the more typical romantic comedies. You know, unless I'm getting audited and I'm on the street and I desperately need some dough and that's the only thing that I'm getting. In terms of the romantic kind of lead, I just never enjoy those movies very much.

American Psycho is a vanity driven body - it's all about keeping cut and everything rather than being strong and capable.

And being as I'm somebody who loves movies like The Machinist, I also love going along to big mass entertainment movies. I get in the mood for all kinds of movies, and so I like to try each of them.

Essentially, I'm untrained, so I just go with my imagination and try to put myself as solidly as I can into the shoes of whatever person I'm going to be playing.

He's not your classical sexy type but he is Batman and you can never underestimate the powers of a superhero!

I don't personally look to my own life experiences for answers about how to play a scene.

I tend to think you're fearless when you recognize why you should be scared of things, but do them anyway.

I went backwards and forwards over it until I was 22. And then in the past few years I began to say to myself, OK, look, I'm not messing around. This is something I want to attack, instead of thinking, I'll just see what happens with it.

I've had some painful experiences in my life, but I feel like I'm trivializing them by using them for a scene in a movie. I don't want to do that. It just makes me feel kind of dirty for having done that.

My method can be nothing, or the most intense, bizarre preparations you've ever seen.

When it comes to films, people often don't differentiate between the message of a bad central character and the message of the film itself. They are two separate things.

I never took acting lessons or anything, it was more of a case of me just being interested in each thing as it came along, rather than thinking this was something I wanted to make a career of. But when I decided I did want to make a career of it, it didn't shock my parents. What would have shocked them was if I wanted to put on a suit and tie and go 9 to 5.

I think I overcomplicated interviews in the past. If you don't like the questions, you can always say no. You're not always going to have people being pleasant, but tough crap, that's life, isn't it? As long as they're not offending people near to me, I don't care what they say. People want to say negative things about me or even untrue things about me -- well, I'm an actor, aren't I? The whole point is to be unknown and sort of misunderstood.

I still do all the things I've always done. I would never want to give up a life of just bumming around, and hanging out by the freeway, or cemeteries, or the parking lot of the 7/11. I would hate to give that up."

I hate that nudge, nudge, wink, wink to the audience. That kills it, doesn't it? What's fun about acting, what's enjoyable about it, is the immersion. I enjoy that, I enjoy losing myself in the roles. And if you're that removed from it that you're trying to remember your own image, and signal that to the audience, then there's no way that you're really inside the character.

I had really enjoyed my anonymity before Empire of the Sun. I liked being with my friends and getting into trouble and breaking into places and smashing things and shoplifting, but now, everyone was looking at me. Anonymity is so essential to your growth as a child because it's a time for putting it all to the test, pushing boundaries, seeing how far you can take things. And I lost that.

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