“Nuclear apocalypse-who do you need? Actors are probably not top of the list. What can I do for you? I can pretend to be somebody who can grow you some nice crops.”

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

If you’re doing your job properly, you take the risk of feeling slightly foolish and delve in and bring out the emotions.

All of the muscles were gone, so that was a real tough time of rebuilding all of that. But you have a deadline, you have an obligation. You’ve said that you will commit to this part, and I just can’t live with myself for not really giving it as much as I can.

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.

It’s very easy to leave when things go wrong, but to stick around and to basically give life to a town because of everything that it gave you generation after generation after generation, that to me is what defines a true American.

I always leave that 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.

Sometimes the truth isn’t good enough. Sometimes people have got to have their faith rewarded.

I have a fear of being boring.

We’re all conning ourselves, one way or another, just to get through life.

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

I never want to feel that I’m playing it safe.

I would have been very happy just cruising around and enjoying the unexpected. I’ve never been ambitious.

Research can be interesting, but it can be pointless as well. The realities of making a movie often are not conducive with that. I’m not knocking it. I love doing research myself, but I admit it doesn’t always add to the performance.

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

It’s not who I am underneath but what I do that defines me.

Planning a career, I always find a tricky thing, because I don’t have much of a plan, really.

Change is vital to any actor. If you keep playing lead after lead, you’re really gonna dry up. Because all those vehicles wean you away from the truths of human behaviour.

Wanting to be a good actor is not good enough. You must want to be a great actor. You just have to have that.

Being misunderstood is not a bad thing as an actor. I know the truth.

From a very early age, I made my decisions based on careers that I admire. The one thing that all the actresses I love have in common is that they have diversity in their careers.

Any actor who tells you that they have become the people they play, unless they’re clearly diagnosed as a schizophrenic, is bullshitting you.

God is the poet; men are but the actors. The great dramas of earth were written in heaven.

I fell in love with theater there, and after graduation I moved to Los Angeles to pursue acting.

People imagine that actors are being offered everything and you are not. So things come in and sometimes there are things that I want and can’t get a meeting on, or go to a different actors.