At any period of an actor's life, it's fairly likely that they'll be cast in ways that are reminiscent. That's the way it goes.

If you're a 'character actor,' you get hired to play baddies a lot.

My general feeling about approach to work is that anyone that's there, they're all there to do the best job they can.

Accents are always difficult in their way, but as long as you're not throwing an audience off with it, then that's all it should be.

I'm very well known in the industry and relatively well known by people who are aficionados and what not, but outside of that - no.

'Animal Kingdom' was an amalgam of two people that I had met-slash-known, not particularly well. They were both very, very scary people for very different reasons.

You feel an affinity with younger actors, because, you know, it's a very insecure job. And it can be a long time before you feel like, you know, things might be all right.

Most young actors, that's all they're trying to do: Get better at acting and be able to keep doing it. And that doesn't work out for most people.

As an actor who has spent twenty years trying to crack America, the day I reached the 'Bloodline' set and found my name on a chair next to Sissy Spacek's was the happiest of my working life.

There are always dimensions, and the way they get expressed is through the writing and the actors and the director you get to work with on that day. But there are always dimensions, outside of really basic stuff for very young people where it needs to be very clear.

I think it's that thing of growing up all the time watching American movies and listening to American music. It hits you in a way that's a lot purer because you are not in that culture that you're watching.

'The Outlaw Josey Wales' is one I watched again and again and again in the early days of VHS.

Fassbender is fearless; he's a fearless actor.

I grew up loving the John Wayne and Clint Eastwood westerns.

I think some of my favorite Australian films were shot by people that are not Australian. And I think when Dean Semler did 'Dances with Wolves,' for instance, that's a very different-looking Western than what you've seen much of before. It's very rich, color-wise. But we've got our own very proud thing going on.

My favorite-ever version of 'King Lear' is the 1971 film by Peter Brooks. He has this enormous fur thing, and it adds enormous gravitas.

In Australia, even the darkest subject matter has a little pinch of humor. A little sweet to make the sour go down.

I think Kyle Chandler is something of a national treasure.

I've been a Ryan Reynolds fan since the first time I saw him.

The way that actors talk about acting is generally quite punishing, and I think actors want to put forward the idea that they do all of this work because, you know, it's a post-De Niro world, when, largely, in fact, it's almost never true.

Let me give you a little Mendelsohn 101: I came up in television in the early- to mid- 1980s in Australia.

I think there's a lot of mythos about what's required in acting.

I have an intensive relationship with the thing that I'm working on, and I hope that comes through. It's better for me to not worry about the things I can't fix once they're done.

It's good to surf whatever waves are going on right there as they're happening.

'Slow West' is a western, and it's sort of a twist on the genre stylistically, I think, from what I understand going in.

One of my earlier films is 'Quigley Down Under.' That was early on in my career, and that was horsey.

You think of 'Outlaw Josey Wales,' you immediately think of the old Indian guy, Sondra Locke, the old lady with the glasses, beautiful old actress.

For me it's a compliment, playing baddie characters. I take it as a compliment.

I think difficult characters are very rewarding to do. They often have facets to them and this and that.