“My life has been the antithesis of that book ‘The Secret’. I’ve always been interested in doing what I do. I love storytelling and I really enjoyed acting, but it never seemed like a realistic thing.”

You have to find it in the moment, and that’s one of the challenges of being an actor – especially a film actor – is that you have to maintain these heightened emotions for long periods of time. There’s no trick to it. You just have to do.

Wes Craven is obviously a horror film icon so I was definitely very interested in bringing something back to life that Wes had created.

But a lot of shows, they pose questions and they give you a puzzle where there’s no solution.

People love roller coasters. People love skydiving. These things that really get your heart pumping, and horror films are sort of a safe way to get that rush I guess.

I try to pick characters that I find interesting and complex and that I feel I can bring something of myself to.

You always take a little bit back with you at the end of the day. I always put a little bit of myself into the characters, too.

The best compliment was Ben Kingsley coming up to me, putting his hand on the back of my neck, and saying, “Good job, son.”.

People have always liked to be frightened. People love to feel that jolt of adrenaline.

I consider myself a blue-collar actor, just chugging away.

Actors, we like stories, we like storytelling, we love being a part of the story, and if you give us a story that’s interesting then we’ll want to do it.

I do know that I’ve read somewhere that it’s been statistically proven that in times of war, horror films are much more popular. I don’t know why that is. You’d think it’d be the opposite. You’d think people would want to escape from it.

It’s nice to know when you’re a part of a story, it’s nice to know at least something about the beginning, middle, and end.

Of course, I’m not allowed to talk about the script, but I can say it is a really good story.

I didn’t follow the whole ‘X-Men’ story because it got too complicated. I’d pick up a comic book and have no idea what was going on.

I’ve been recognized very seldom. I think I just look different in person than I do as the character.

You find parallels, points of connection, things like that. But I’m not an actor who gets so incredibly haunted by my characters that I can’t come back.

The difference between the extras here and in France is the French extras read books. Actually, they hide the book and pretend that they’re acting. Here (in Hollywood), you can see everybody wants his break.

I wasn’t disciplined at all. As good of an athlete as I was, I was not disciplined. Had I had the drive that I have in comedy, and acting, and writing, that’s why I knew it just wasn’t right for me.

A man who strains himself on the stage is bound, if he is any good, to strain all the people sitting in the stalls.

The whole thing about acting, the draw for me, is the opportunity to do things you don’t get to do in real life.

What matters in Politics is what men actually do – sincerity is no excuse for acting unpolitically, and insincerity may be channelled by politics into good results.

I was a bad student. I liked archaeology actually, I was interested in maybe becoming an archaeologist but I was such a bad student and had such bad grades that I wasn’t going to get into any really good college so I fell back on acting.

For me personally, I’m mostly focused on writing and acting right now.

Getting up early and setting myself daily targets, even outside of acting, keeps me active and motivated in general and thus happier, which I hope translates into my personality and my work.