"It's always awkward doing love scenes - whether it be with a man or a woman."
"We had to choreograph, it was definitely like walking on the moon for the first time. But it wasn't... the butt of a mule: I was kissing a human being with a soul. And part of the magic of acting is, you harness the infinite power of belief."
"It was the most kind of complex and internal character I've been offered to play and it would take a very mature performance out of me to complete this character. It was a perfect script and involves a story that hadn't been told which is hard to find in this industry and in general. I think the story of love is just getting recycled and stale and this just hadn't been put to screen. I thought I'd be crazy to turn it down."
"I'm very expressive and have investigated love and you know, love is love. It's never been a problem. I could have taught Ennis a thing or two, but I couldn't. I was never shocked by the idea that men could fall in love with each other. I always knew and respected that."
"Everyone asks you know 'what was the most difficult thing for you,' or 'physically what was the hardest thing,' expecting me to say, 'oh, making out with Jake Gyllenhaal. and it's a really obvious thing to say, but at the end of the day after the first take (pause, makes kissing motion) it was like, ok let's get on with the day. Let's get through it. And all the mystery had been taken away. It really wasn't such a big deal. And yeah, he's a good kisser."
'I'm always gonna pull myself apart and dissect it. I mean, there's no such thing as perfection in what we do. Pornos are more perfect than we are, because they're actually f__king.''
'' No one else around you, except your mum, is going to tell you that, you suck. She straight-up told me. 'There are other things to do in life.'''
''I started to feel like a bottle of Coke,'' he says. ''And there was a whole marketing scheme to turn me into a very popular bottle. And, you know, Coke tastes like shit. But there's posters everywhere so people will buy it. So I felt like I tasted like shit, and I was being bought for no reason.''
''I'd been concentrating on how to act,'...not how to... be a salesman. Agents, publicists — they all say, 'Go out and create a character!' I don't want to create a fucking character, but on the same hand I don't want to give myself, I either. When you don't go on Letterman and say, 'Hey! I've got a joke!' — when you sit there honest and nervous and like a normal human being, you get written down as boring and ungrateful.''
''I wanted to take the blond out of my career, kill the direction it was going. I wanted to be bad, I wanted to be good. I was like, 'Well, now, how am I gonna make this a career I would like to have?''' If no audiences came, ''Good. That's gonna help me out.''
''I'd finally — whether consciously or unconsciously — I perfectly sabotaged any studio interest in working with me.''
'You know when you see the preachers down South? And they grab a believer and they go, 'Bwoom! I touch you with the hand of God!' And they believe so strongly, they're on the ground shaking and spitting. And fuck's sake, that's the power of belief.'' (He shakes his head). ''Now, I don't believe in Jesus, but I believe in my performance. And if you can understand that the power of belief is one of the great tools of our time and that a lot of acting comes from it, you can do anything.''