Every now and then, I have a deep thought.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

The best jujitsu practitioners are really serene and grounded.

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

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.

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.'

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 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.

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.

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 learned so much by being an actor, and part of my sort-of development as a writer is big thanks to the scripts I read in my acting life.

One of the things I've always enjoyed is moving around and staying fit. Physicality is such a big part of being an actor, but it's also about stillness and silence.

There's a real sense of fighting and destruction in our DNA that we don't get in touch with.

I have this theory that alpha males are actually not alpha males. They're actually very scared - particularly scared of competition from a lot of men.

I don't want to be too power-hungry.