When I was young, I had a very clear point of view on things in life, on moral questions. There was a black and white viewpoint on my world. As I've gotten older, I see the grey areas appear.

I often put any project I write in a different decade just to roll the thought around in my head. There's a thriller I've written that I think would be nice to set in the '70s or '80s, just to take cell phones away from the movie. There's nothing like the piercing ring of an old-school telephone to really scare an audience.

I have always stuck to my guns about what I want from the work and what interests me. I've never been seduced down the evil path. The path of taking the money.

Even to this day, when I think about the fact that I'm in this 'Star Wars' world, that I'm a half-brother to Darth Vader and an uncle to Luke Skywalker, it's too hard to wrap my head around.

I wasted too much time in my twenties. I worked, but I would do theater in the evening, and during the day I would surf and do irascible things. And then, for some reason, as I got closer to my thirties, I thought, 'Okay Joel, you've wasted enough time.'

I worked for a big department store, and strangely, on my first day, they put me in charge of Christmas wrapping. I didn't know how to wrap a present and make it not look like it fell off a truck.

The little bit of buzz around 'Warrior' led to a lot of opportunities anyway, before the movie even came out.

The best jujitsu practitioners are really serene and grounded.

The biggest difference for me is momentum. On a smaller film you get to shoot sometimes four or five scenes a day and you've got to do the tight schedule. I think I really feel the luxuries of a big budget film.

It's tricky. I've never been standing at the top of the tree with tons of money thrown at me. I've never really had a profile. So in a way I have this 'nothing to lose' attitude.

If, at the end of the day, I can look back and see pictures of all the characters I've played, and there's a smorgasbord of weirdos and interesting, odd, different characters, I'd be so happy.

It's an incredibly liberating feeling to have a skirt on. In fact, I know you can buy skirts, and you can buy work kilts and all sorts of stuff.

Whenever you deal with science fiction you are setting up a world of rules. I think you work hard to establish the rules. And you also have to work even harder to maintain those rules, and within that find excitement and unpredictability and all that stuff.

There's the pressure of being a No. 1 on the call sheet, being a lead actor. There's almost this feeling like being captain of the team. You want to put a bit of energy into actually setting a good example.

To me, 'Warrior' was a real turning point - probably one of the greatest experiences I've ever had as an actor on set.

The Australians are actually the worst of the criminals from the United Kingdom, but not worst as in toughest. They're the ones who did stupid little things and got caught for it. Bad criminals.

'The Great Gatsby' ticked so many boxes for me.

I reckon I would be able compare anything to anything else if you gave me enough time.

Every now and then, I have a deep thought.

I blame my work for a lot of things. I thank my work for a lot of things, too, but the trouble with being so passionately involved in work is that it becomes like a lover, like your partner, because it nourishes you.

The first video I ever watched was on a Beta system because everyone thought Beta was the way but then it ended up being video so we backed the wrong horse.

The sum total of all my stop-starts have made me less concerned about the future. I'm just aware now that I'll always land on my feet somehow.

It feels good to be fit and strong.

That's one of the great privileges, being an actor, is that someone pays you and sends you off to learn about something that otherwise you'd never know about.

Really, no-one is bad except for serial killers and dictators.

I always kind of aim with the action stuff to make it feel like, as an audience member, you're experiencing what the people are experiencing. As soon as you go into slow-mo or repeated edits, shooting it like it's a stunt, it takes it out of that reality. The more real you make that stuff, the more tense it will be.

The tricky thing becomes: Do you know yourself well enough to then portray that on screen? And for me, I find that really hard. I'd rather hide behind accents and funny walks.

I tend to take on a lot of things. And then they all just seem to happen at once. Or maybe I'm not good at saying 'No'. But the juggling's fun.

I remember my brother Nash had just directed me in 'The Square,' and I was sitting in Australia going: 'No one's called me about working for ages. I don't know if I'm ever going to get another job.'

I'm on the list that I thought I'd never be on. I'm not sitting here thinking, 'God, I might get this part' or 'is it too late for me to play Hamlet?' It's really about: who do I get to work with? There's so many people on that list.

To act with a tennis ball and imagine it's a tentacle, or if you're in some kind of wilderness film and you go, 'Okay, we can't have a grizzly bear here, but imagine when you step over the rock there there's a grizzly bear.' I don't know. They're tough moments.

I'm a pacifist.

Sometimes, the smaller roles in movies can be the most interesting. If you only take the stance that you'll only play central characters in movies, you'll find yourself not being able to indulge in that morally grey terrain that makes support characters so rich and interesting.

Every job leaves its residue, a bit of extra knowledge, a new skill-set.

I can't sing or dance.

I don't want at the end of my life to look back at just a bunch of fictional movies I was involved in that kept taking me away from the real world.

I wanted to make a movie that was kind of a tribute to the way I feel when I watch a John Hughes movie.

There's definitely a fascination with crime stories and stories of characters acting out against authority.

'Animal Kingdom' feels like a suburban Melbourne version of 'The Godfather 'to me. It's epic and Shakespearean in its story, and yet you still feel like you can reach out and touch it.

I think, often with Australian films, if an Australian film has been given the seal of approval by an offshore festival or an offshore release, then it does mean a lot to a local audience.

I don't necessarily see myself as an experienced filmmaker just because I've been in a few movies.

Part of me wonders what it would have been like to have had my first experience of India in a normal way, rather than through the eyes of a film.

I love the idea of real-life experiences finding their way into fiction. I think that's really cool.

I just don't want to do crap movies, man, because I just love that I can get up and talk about them and talk to journalists about stuff that I'm really proud of.

I just love good movies. And not every movie you're going to end up in is always going to turn out right, but at least walk into it with the right intention.

I love what I do, but it occurs to me I may have handed over a large portion of my life to fiction.

Fighting in the ring or cage is very much different from fighting in the street. Fighting in the street is very much fueled by anger, pride, and male dominance and ego.

I had a brother who was bullying me to write something because we wanted to make our own movies. So it was out of necessity in the beginning. Over time, I began to see that I could create the roles I wanted to play rather than just waiting around.

One of the great joys of being able to write something you can make, if you get certain actors you want and love, you're kind of buying yourself a front row seat to watch them work.

I think I'd be too scared to direct my first movie and put myself in the center.