“I’m not really looking forward to wearing a black rubber suit in the summertime in humid Chicago. If you see a pool of sweat through the city, follow it and you will find me.”
“It’s the actors who are prepared to make fools of themselves who are usually the ones who come to mean something to the audience.”
“I always like that. Whenever there’s a project where everyone’s going, ‘Oooooh, it’s a bit dodgy,’ I always like it. If you actually look at it, there tends not to be anything risky at all. Why did I start acting in the first place? I didn’t do it to be mediocre or to please everybody all the time.”
“I’m English. Our dentistry is not world famous. But I made sure I got moldings of my old teeth beforehand because I miss them.”
“I like being kept in the dark myself. You know, like mushrooms: Keep ‘em in the dark and feed ‘em shit. See, I think that’s an enjoyable vegetable to be.”
“At first, I was somewhat hesitant to do the role. I mean, after all, Batman is an icon. But I remember, as clear as day, being at the grocery store the day the movie opened, and this little boy saw me. He couldn’t have been more than five years old. He just walked right up to me and hugged me. He hugged me, and I was so moved by it that I hugged him back. Then he looked up at me and said “You’re my hero.” And in that moment, I knew that not only as an actor that I had done my job, but that I had made the right decision to play Batman. And I’ve never looked back on my the decision to play Batman since.”
“If everyone really knew what a jerk I am in real life, I wouldn’t be so adored in the slightest.”
“I only sound intelligent when there’s a good script writer around.”
About the love scene with Ewan McGregor in the movie “Velvet Goldmine”: “I took it like a man. He was really tender, very caring. He hugged me afterward. But he never writes. He never calls. Goddamn him! Actually, it was a freezing night when we were doing the scene, and it was far less explicit than Ewan and myself thought it was going to be. The camera was on another roof looking across at us. The only thing Todd did was whisper, ‘Cut,’ rather than shouting it, so that Ewan and I couldn’t hear. We were going at it for ages. Then Ewan sort of turned his head and realized, ‘Hey, the camera’s not fucking pointed at us anymore!’ So, I sort of turned my head. We stop, and the whole crew is just sitting there. They’d cut ages ago!”
“I think trying too hard to be sexy is the worst thing in the world a woman can do.”
“I never thought I’d be in a movie where they would make a doll out of me. That is a bit of a trippy one, but not something I’ve not dwelled on too much. Hopefully [it's] something my daughter will one day be able to enjoy–sinking it in the pool or blowing it up.”
“I don’t think I was particularly in need of superheroes. I never had any fascination with Superman or Spider-Man or a Batman kind of character. If it happened at all, it was imagined characters that I had invented. My dad was a role model for me. He was a fascinating man. There was intrigue and entertainment growing up with him. He gave me an edict that I still pursue: “Life should never be boring.”
“There’s something attractive about dark, damaged characters.”
“I don’t want to sound like some cheesy commercial, but you can tell everything about someone by her eyes. Somebody may have this fantastic figure, but she’s got dull eyes, then that’s someone I don’t want to stick around for.”
About his date with Drew Barrymore: “Well, I was 13, and I’d just done Empire of the Sun, and I was a young, impressionable lad. She was quite a well-developed girl, and I was standing playing the arcade at Amblin, and suddenly this voluptuous figure arrived beside me, and I thought, Bing! I was quite stunned, and she asked if I wanted to go see a film, so I did. We went to see some bloody awful horror film, and that was the end of it. She never called again.”
About the type of woman he’s attracted to: “A good sense of humor, intelligence and great eyes. I’m also partial to ones with a pulse.”
About his meeting with Gerard Depardieu: “The first time I met him I was asleep in my dressing room, and I woke up because there was such a loud belch, and I sat up and there he was in his shorts, sort of scratching himself. And he said to me, (adopting French accent) “It’s OK? I can come in?” And he came in and we had a chat for ten minutes, and he was off again. We didn’t talk much during the filming. Mostly leering at each other. He’d come up and go, (makes blubbery noise with his lips) “Christian!” And I’d go (same noise) “Gerard!” That was the extent of it, really.”
“Well, I was just sitting and watching the film Priest with my sister and her husband. And there are quite explicit sex scenes in that. And a fair amount of snogging going on. At one point they turned to me and said, “What would you do?” (Laughs) And my reply was, “Well, I think I would.” I would have a reservation about tongues, I think. Otherwise, without having been put in the situation, I would, yeah. I really don’t think I would have a problem with it.”
“Actually to be honest, I bloody love being called a sex symbol! It’s great when girls think I’m cute!”
“I walk under ladders, I do all that stuff. I do it on purpose. I like provoking superstitions.”
“Essentially, I’m untrained, so I just go with my imagination and try to put myself as solidly as I can into the shoes of whatever person I’m going to be playing.”
“The only thing that I’m obsessed with is sleeping and, actually, it is more than an obsession, it is a pleasure. I love sleeping so much that I could do it 12 hours a day if I didn’t have to turn on the alarm clock…and still, sometimes…”
“I don’t think I’m like any of the characters I’ve played – they’re all really far from who I am.”
“I have a fear of being boring.”
“I never want to turn something down because I’m afraid to do it, because of some idea of image or whatever. That was never anything I set out to do. In fact, the opposite, I always want to confuse people in terms of any kind of image and be unpredictable in any kind of movie I make. I never want to feel that I’m playing it safe.”
“I felt like a fool just standing there in a batsuit, chatting and having coffee. You look like a drunken partygoer on Halloween.”
“I’ll tell you nothing scandalous! I used to play on a rugby team. Interesting, huh? I’m sure I’ve never said that before, because why would I? I don’t play sports now on a regular basis. I have a dirt bike, I run–away from people. I would like to play more football–er, soccer.”
“Right now–at the moment? Sexiness is in the eye of the beholder, isn’t it? I haven’t bought any sexy underwear. Some people may find it sexy, even though I don’t intend to buy them for that. Why am I talking about what underwear I wear?”
“The whole marriage thing I actually consider fun. It’s surprised me, but I enjoy saying “my wife.” I made a guy apologize to her the other night because he was rude. After saying, “You, apologize to my wife,” I couldn’t stop laughing because it felt great to say it.”
“I don’t really have hobbies. I like to dirt-bike. I have a motocross bike, and I love doing that. But, you know, otherwise I just make faces at myself in the mirror, really. More faces in the mirror.”
“An actor should never be larger than the film he’s in.”
“I tend to think you’re fearless when you recognize why you should be scared of things, but do them anyway.”
“I’m the last person to have any kind of posse… I’ve always been a loner – I can’t stand having people around me too much. I don’t have an assistant ever because I know I would end up just throwing them out of the room. I like my private time and I am not incapable. I can still do things for myself. A lot of people seem to think that as soon as they start earning above a certain pay cheque they become incapable. I can still wipe my own arse”.
“I don’t want to know about the lives of other actors and I don’t want people to know too much about me. If we don’t know about the private lives of other actors, that leaves us as clean slates when it comes to playing characters. That’s the point, they can create these other characters and I can believe them. I think if you’re a good enough actor, that’s the way to longevity in the film business. Keep everybody guessing.”
“It gives me a sort of smug smile that there are people who very thoroughly appreciate my work and talk about it. Some people would think it’s creepy, but it doesn’t enter into my daily life.”
“I don’t personally look to my own life experiences for answers about how to play a scene.”
“I’ve had some painful experiences in my life, but I feel like I’m trivializing them by using them for a scene in a movie. I don’t want to do that. It just makes me feel kind of dirty for having done that.”
“I had spent weeks staring at the wall in my house out of depression because of things that had gone wrong and the choices I had made. When I read The Machinist, I just went, `Wow! This is perfect. I was having dreams about the character and I couldn`t stop thinking about it. I felt like this one was going to save my arse, and pull me out of the depressed state I had got into.”
On the difference in playing Jesus in NBC’s “Mary, Mother of Jesus” and a serial killer in the upcoming “American Psycho”: “I had more nightmares playing Jesus.”
On method acting: ”I’m not having therapy. It’s very limiting if I have to relate every damn thing in somebody else’s life to something that’s happened in mine. At the end of the day, I’m faking it. Pure imagination.”
Comparing his ”American Psycho” character to his villain in ”Shaft”: ”Walter Wade is more of your straightforward, ‘likes to punch people in the face’ guy. Patrick Bateman is more your chain saw-dissection kind of guy. Personally, I think Patrick would eat Walter alive. It’s a whole different level of psychosis that Walter can’t even begin to understand.”
“I have this theory that, depending on your attitude, your life doesn’t have to become this ridiculous charade that it seems so many people end up living.”