My philosophy about the whole thing is that awards are like gifts: it’s lovely to receive them, and it is very bad form to covet them.
A lot of my friends are gangsters. Not like gangsters – well, yeah, all sorts of levels of criminality – but not the types that are preying on innocent people. I have no interest in the type of criminality that has no respect for collateral damage.
They say that theater is the actor’s medium, television is the writer’s medium and film is the director’s medium, and it’s really true.
I always think it’s better to take a smaller role in a great film rather than a leading role in something that you don’t have complete faith in.
I was playing pretty boys and these angelic roles like Nicholas Nickleby and all that stuff. And I was like, ‘What am I doing? This isn’t who I am, as a man or an artist.’ I had to overcome people’s belief that I was too pretty to be a badass.
There are definitely worse people to be compared with. I think Brad Pitt makes interesting decisions.
I have too many control issues, so it just is not good for me to go and watch a film, too soon after I make it.
To fight monsters, we created monsters of our own.
Being at the mercy of the acting profession, in the early days of one’s career, is really brutal and feels like you have no control over your life, at all.
The truth of the matter is the real industry is in LA and the cream of the talent is there.
I’m currently doing Undeclared an American TV show set in a college. It just got aired and got massive ratings so hopefully that’ll screen in the UK soon.
I love hip hop music, I make hip hop music.
I get invited to literally every single movie premiere that’s going on.
It always seemed to me like it was a significant thing to do with one’s life to be an actor ’cause I love movies and I felt like, not to be grandiose about it, but there is something important about film with the function it provides to general society.
I find aspects of the industry tedious and hard to manage.
Good roles are hard to come by, and whether they’re a few lines or a lead, you snap ’em up when they come along.
In a work capacity I’m only interested in acting and producing.
Acting is never really effortless, at least not for me. It requires a massive amount of work. But, there’s definitely an added level of having to just create the whole thing again, every time. It’s also a very exciting thing, to do that.
If I’d seen a grown man beating a crippled boy, of course I’d intervene. If my father died and left my mother destitute, it’s your instinct to take care of her. So when I started to think about it in those terms, it started to make sense to me.
I bought a house, and I’ve been decorating it.
I got expelled from high school, and then did my exams from home. I decided, through that experience, that I was going to expediate my plan and didn’t go to university. Instead, I went to a community college and studied the theory and history of film with the idea that I wanted to write and direct.