Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I'd like a bit of a crack at some kind of anarchic comedy, but whether or not I'm skillful enough at it all, we'll see.
I can't bear shopping. I can choose clothes for my characters, but not for myself. I've got no dress sense. Or I've lost it.
I have been to the theater more since I have lived in New York than I ever really did in London working on a television show.
Someone told me a woman bought a dog so she could take it to the same park where I go running, but I'm hoping that's rubbish.
When I told my mom I was going to audition for 'The Hobbit,' she said, 'Well, you've always loved Tolkien.' And she was right.
I think if I had come out of drama school and been an instant Hollywood superstar, I would be taking long, leisurely holidays.
As an actor, you're like, 'Yeah, I want that phone call from Peter Jackson saying, 'You're my first choice for Thorin Oakenshield.'
I feel like my imagination was crafted by Tolkien. He seemed to tap into that childhood intrigue of secret doors and hidden worlds.
Personally, I'm not interested in getting more money for what I do; I'm just interested in more money being put into the production.
A charity donkey is where you sponsor a donkey in a sanctuary and give them three pounds a month to have some donkey nuts or something.
To survive in a profession like this, you have to have absolute discipline and commitment, and I did not quite have it for musical theater.
I suppose I'm a bit mean. My face on camera doesn't lend itself to happy nice guys. I think it's just that my bone structure looks menacing.
You can spend a bit of yourself when you give yourself to a character. At the end of a job, you have to remind yourself who and what you are.
Often you find the character through the things they say. How they talk about other people, how they describe themselves - which is very rare.
I did quite a lot of menial jobs. I was a waiter, an inventory clerk touring round properties listing cups and saucers, and a laserquest marshal.
Since real spies are so good, you never really know what actual spying is. But I do think spying is a lot more dangerous than we are led to believe.
I'm a late developer in everything. I have a fast mind and fast metabolism, and I'm an intense worker, but in terms of life development, I'm way behind.
Being thought of as sexy makes one employable, but it's not going to last forever, so I try not to think about it. It's like something that exists outside of me.
I've done an awful lot of skiing all over Europe: I've done Italy, Austria, France. I skied loads in New Zealand - I did pretty much every ski slope I could find.
My instruction to my parents is that I would rather they enjoy their retirement than leave me anything when they go. I am much happier watching them enjoying life.
People like continuity, and the good old cliffhanger every week is something they enjoy. I enjoy it - I don't want to dip into just one episode when I turn on the TV.
I think that when Tolkien created Gollum and the ring, he even expressed in his biography that he never really knew what he created until he went back and looked at it.
It fills me with dismay sometimes when you look at the scripts that do come to you that are primarily focused on violence. There are so many other things to play around with.
Trying to please everyone can be very hard, but, like 'Shrek' or 'The Simpsons,' 'Robin Hood' manages to entertain adults and children at the same time, but in different ways.
I have an accountant, obviously, because I'm self employed, and I use an independent financial adviser. I trust my accountant because we have worked together for a long time now.
I'm not interested in building wealth, which is kind of naive and probably frowned on, living in America. It's something that people don't necessarily understand, but if I die poor, I die poor.
You fight for certain roles, and you realise they're being filled by television and film actors, because theatre is constantly fighting for survival and they need names and faces and ticket sales.
The scariest stunt I've ever done was on 'Captain America.' We were doing some underwater sequence. I was in a submarine, and Chris Evans had to break the glass, and the water had to fill up quickly in the submarine.
I'm not a massive fan of 3D. I've seen some good 3D, and I've seen quite a lot of bad 3D. I think if a film is created for the shock effect of 3D, then it's a certain type of film that I'm not massively bothered about.
The narrative that Peter Jackson has put into 'The Battle of the Five Armies,' it stands alone as a film. Rather than just finishing off the story, it's like a whole new adventure all of its own. I'm very excited about it.
I try to keep at a non-obsessive level of fitness. It's not about looking great, it's about just feeling good. So I do a lot of yoga. Bikram just blows my mind. It's mental as well as physical; if I don't train, I get very depressed.
I confess I've got a yearning to go to Los Angeles, but I can't work out if it is because a lot of British actors seem to go or because there's this perception that the bottom has fallen out of British drama, so therefore, it's the place to head for.
Tolkien was, I believe, writing about his experience in the First and Second World Wars, where he would have spent a lot of time without any female contact. He was part of the fellowship of men who went to war, and I think, really, that's what he's writing about.
It's bloody annoying being shy. I'll spend a whole evening at a party asking everyone else about themselves. I'm not being self-deprecating; it's because I'm too shy to talk about myself. So people come away from the evening actually having learnt nothing about me.
I read everything that Tolkien wrote, and also read biographies of him. I was fascinated by his experiences in World War I, which includes the loss of life of some of his very, very close friends. I think he writes about that a lot in 'The Hobbit' and 'The Lord of the Rings.'