I'll speak for myself, but there's a lot of humor to be found in sarcasm and darkness. You talk to any paramedic, they survive by developing a pretty off-kilter sense of humor.

One of the pluses of getting older is you set some limits.

As a teenager I was more of an anarchist, but now I want people to thrive and be harmonious.

Mel Blanc is a hero because of what he could do with his voice for all the Looney Tunes, the Warner Brothers cartoons, to be the voice of Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Elmer Fudd, Porky Pig. To me, he's a great actor.

I haven't isolated myself. I am not living on a yacht somewhere. I am not tucked away or behind a gate somewhere. I am not flying on a private plane. I am going to the airport, I am with people, some of the interactions are good, some of them are not so good, but it keeps me in touch with being, you know, part of society.

God bless my father, but he always spoke in this continental, literary accent, probably because he was a professor of comparative literature and he made the decision to speak with distinction.

I'm not contractually obligated to sequels on anything.

I do enjoy animated movies. I really love anime and movies like 'Spirited Away' and 'Howl's Moving Castle.'

Acting is always at the core of my life, but I'm also excited about producing. I'm excited about directing, and I have a life in the filmmaking world, and so I want to explore all aspects of it, not just the acting, but acting is the root.

Acting is like any other art form, in that you have the option to go very big or go very small.

For me, acting was a way of taking destructive energy and doing something productive with it, and in that way it was quite a life saver.

How do you say one actor is better than another actor? You can definitely say that in the Olympics if it's the same race and someone wins the race. The only way to really do it and have it be sincere would be if you get all the actors together, and they're all playing the same part, and then you rate which one made you feel the most.

I'm one of those people that feels that Americans that shouldn't do Shakespeare... The rhythms of the English language and the mannerisms of the English speech seems to work effortlessly with William Shakespeare, but when Americans do it, something seems stuck.

I wanted to make an image for myself as an outlaw type. A kind of rock 'n' roll sensibility.

I'm sticking my tongue out in scenes to try to make that work in 3D. I'm thinking I'll try to get my tongue all the way out to the second row of the audience.

Film acting is one of the only industries where you're criticized for working hard. In any other industry, it's considered a quality and something to behold.

As I got older, with my work, I became aware of the responsibility of film, and I feel one of the best ways I can apply myself as an actor, is to go beyond movie stardom and celebrity.

I may be alone in this, but I do sense the power of film, in that movies have the ability to literally change people's minds. That's pretty powerful stuff when you consider that.

My father was always getting excited about something. It's genetically inside me somewhere.

Everything we do impacts someone else's life.

We do see Gong Li, Zhang Ziyi and Chow Yun Fat, but it's very rare to see the Chinese male actor in Hollywood movies, which is something I take great umbrage with. You know, my son is Asian. He may want to direct one day; he may want to be an actor like his father - and I want that to be open to him.

You can choose your family sometimes. You can choose people, it could be a teacher, it could be a professor, it could be someone you work with that actually genuinely cares about you and wants you to succeed.

Just because you're a man doesn't mean that you can't raise your kid. I think that families should stay together, but if you are a single father, don't give up no matter what they say.

One day, one of my dreams is to someday get to do Nemo in '20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.'

As a child, these colourful superheroes that could fly, or were horrifying like Ghost Rider and the Hulk, with this tremendous rage or these supernatural powers, provided an escape for me from my mundane existence, from my lack of friends or my inability to communicate well with people. They liberated me.

Good science fiction is intelligent. It asks big questions that are on people's minds. It's not impossible. It has some sort of root in the abstract.

I'm always curious about what happens when we die. And I'd like to think that somehow the spirit goes on. I'd rather not think that it's just about this.

There were two movies that asked me to go to Australia or New Zealand for long periods of time. One was 'Lord of the Rings' and one was 'The Matrix.' But I was actively involved at that time raising my family, and I couldn't really take that time out.

I loved 'Fantasia' as a kid because it filled me with wonder, enchantment and awe. It was my first real introduction into classical music. It was totally inspiring to me.

The best characters are the ones that somehow manage to be both attractive and repulsive at the same time. If you do that, you're at the center of the universe - if you can find characters who are more ambiguous and can raise more questions than answers.

And what I like about it is it makes me happy and I think it makes a lot of people happy to go to the movies and to not think about the problems of the day or the problems of tomorrow or the yesterday and just go on for the ride and have the fun of losing oneself in a fantasy.

I like both Blu-ray and DVD, but Blu-ray gives you more options.

I never studied dance, but if you look at 'Wild At Heart,' my mother saw that movie and said, 'You are a dancer. Look at how you're moving: all that strange energy is like modern dance.'

I always say to myself that if I can make a movie that makes a kid smile or gives them some hope or something to get excited about, then I'm applying myself in the best way that I can. I don't think that just goes for kids. I think that it goes for adults, as well, and for families.

I would like to find a way to embrace what Led Zeppelin did, in filmmaking.

I think I've spent more time in front of a camera than off camera. That's just the way it is.

When I was eight, I would look at the cover of the 'Ghost Rider' comic book in my little home in Long Beach, California, and I couldn't get my head around how something that scary could also be good. To me it was my first philosophical awakening - 'How is this possible, this duality?'

If I could have been a marine biologist I would have, but I didn't have that kind of intelligence. Numbers were never my strong point.

I'm not a trained actor. I'm someone who is autodidactic and learned on my own.

I don't want to sit around by the pool luxuriating with a margarita. That's just not what I want to do.

It's amazing marrying someone who wants nothing to do with Hollywood.

I'm not an anarchist any more. I still love the Sex Pistols, but I don't want to be a punk rocker all the time, but I do want to carry on exploring new forms of acting.

One of my goals is to have a base near mainland China. I think Hong Kong would be a good match for me. I like being in Hong Kong.

I knew I wanted to be an actor when I was very young. I guess I was about 6 years old at the time, and I was fascinated by television. I started having waking fantasies where I was in a movie and there were crane shots of me during a scene.

I know there's been a lot that's been said about animated voice work, as though it's 'you can do this in your jeans and there's no camera and no pressure there. It's no big deal. It's easy.' The truth is, it's really a great test: how deep is your ability is to access your imagination?

I came out of independent film, that's my roots.

I think that if you go about making movies to win Oscars, you're really going about it the wrong way.

Often you hear stories about never working with children. I disagree because children still have that residual magical thinking. They haven't had their imagination knocked out of them by turning into adults and life experiences.

Shock is still fun. I won't ever shut the door on it.

I want to always find new ways of reinventing myself.