One thing I don't do anymore is read or pay attention to the critical response, which is a bummer because when I started, and when I was in school, I loved to read old film criticism.
I am in the process of starting a nonprofit organization that gives rescued animals a home in a simulated wild environment and, for those who have been tested on, who are disabled, aggressive, etc., their own space to live out their days.
I believe that any kind of mistreatment of anyone for any reason is unacceptable and abhorrent, and everyone deserves to be treated with respect in the workplace and anywhere else.
I believe veganism can be beneficial for the individual and the world, and of course the animal, but belief is like laying in the dark with someone and telling them you love them and hearing nothing back. So I've never had the confidence to get on a soapbox and tell someone else what to do.
Sometimes being an actor is kind of demanding in very different ways.
I do think people do pick movies that reveal something about them that they aren't always aware of. If you ask them what kind of an actor they think they are, they'll probably tell you something different than what they've actually done.
It's part of the actor's job to show up with a head full of steam, to have their own take on this. So that way, you're not relying on, 'OK, tell me how to do it.'
In my movies, there has been little to do in the way of animal rights. I have never worked in a movie with animals. No horse-riding, no trained dogs, lions, bears. A few actors, but what could I do? We had to have them.
Things are never crystal clear, but at some point, they reveal themselves to you. You just hope it happens when you're still on set.
People should try eating no animal products for just ONE DAY a week.
My family would be supportive if I said I wanted to be a Martian, wear only banana skins, make love to ashtrays, and eat tree bark.
My first exposure to TV, film, theater, the idea of what acting was, is I was a little kid, and my mom's best friend was a local casting director in Cambridge, Mass. Her name was Patty Collinge.
I tricked myself into doing this movie.
I have friends who remember seeing fish hauled onto a boat's deck and beaten to death.
I've written some love letters in my life, I can say.
The first dog I had was owned by an abusive couple. He was very skittish. He wouldn't let me hold him. It was explained to me that it was because of how he was treated.
I don't really care that much about being a matinee idol.
I knew it would be hard work, but that's the reason you're an actor. If you're a bricklayer, you don't want to just show up at someone's house and put a little row of bricks around their garden. You want to build a building.
I moved out to LA, got an agent, started auditioning. I didn't know anything about how it worked. And since I was really bad, luckily, I didn't get any of those parts.
What I learned on 'To Die For,' I learned over the years that followed, when some memory from the shoot would bubble up to the surface of my mind, and I could see it from a new perspective. I would usually cringe when that happened.
All cultures are different. Some commit genocide. Some are uniquely peaceful. Some frequent bathhouses in groups. Some don't show each other the soles of their shoes or like pictures taken of them. Some have enormous hunting festivals or annual stretches when nobody speaks. Some don't use electricity.
When I like someone a lot, I get scared that I'll let them down. My fear of sucking is worst when I feel like someone thinks I'm good.
In a movie we try to deceive. In theaters, as they say, the deceived are the wisest.
If you look at the paths of other actors, most people have a curve where you hit it and there's a time where you make a lot of money and they let you make your movies, and then they take it away and it's gone.
I had a public school education - 3,000 kids when I was there. And there were a lot of teachers who would just sit there. You'd come in and sign your name and the teacher would just sit there at the head of the class and you would literally just have to stay in your seat for 40 minutes and that was the only thing you'd have to do in class.
I've run into people who say, 'I know what you're like: You're a Boston guy.' That's so weird. This person who doesn't know anything about me thinks they know a lot because of the city I grew up in, which, to me, is a meaningless label. There are all kinds of people from Boston.
I feel like there's an obligation - this sounds terribly pretentious - if you're an artist, to share your own experience in a way that's truthful and honest: 'This is what I have to share; this is my life.'
I have a very bad relationship with mice.
The first movie was mostly about George and Julia. This one is mostly about me and Catherine and our love story and our whole history. So it's a very different movie.
Celebrity never really served me that well; it serves other people well.
After I left LA... it was like waking up. And so I moved back east and stopped auditioning.
I feel like I've been picky through the years and would do one movie a year or one movie every two years, and I want to work a lot more. So if I can find something that just happens right away as a director, I'll do it if I really love it, but otherwise, I want to keep working as an actor and getting better.
I feel really lucky to have been able to not only have him as a brother - because I love him and he's such a smart guy and an interesting, fun guy - but also have a friend to go through and chart and navigate the waters of Hollywood, which can be kind of alienating and lonely at times just because everyone is always... you know what it's like.
It's really fun when a scene doesn't work.
When other people say, 'Oh you're so-and-so's friend, brother, or husband,' it's reductive to the point of being white noise.
In New York, as long as you're not peeing in someone's doorway, everyone thinks you're a gentleman. I feel like my behavior goes over better on the streets of New York.
Is it really every 10 years that you get to work on a great movie? That can't be.
Truth is, there's never really been anything so horrible said about me that I haven't either thought of or said to myself.
I think there's a certain amount of pressure depending on how demanding the part is, depending on how great the material is. I feel a certain amount of pressure to rise to the occasion.
We obsess about celebrities. We create them, build myths around them, and then hunt them and destroy them. I don't know where it's taking us or what it means, but I know we do it. I have seen a lot of it myself.
I guess people think if you're well-known, it's perfectly fine to say anything you want. I don't know why that is. But it shouldn't be, because everybody has families and lives.
Part of the criteria for doing a project is that it's scary or challenging because at some point you go, 'It's too scary; it's too challenging. I don't want to do it.' But things that seem easy are never any fun.
I like studio movies; I love big commercial movies.
When a performance isn't working, it's usually because the actor is trying to do something and they're not able to express their idea very well. It's a muddled expression.
I love to think about and therefore talk about why people do what they do. That's kind of why I like being an actor.
When you're the younger brother, usually it's not that common that you're having these experiences that your older brother is in awe of.
Why can't people just say they were moved? Why do they have to say it's sappy?
I get offered a lot of the same type of thing... The teenage slasher movies.
I didn't have to audition. That's common, but it had never happened to me before. Normally, I hate auditioning. I need to stew and think... let the character develop and grow inside me.
