And I've always loved commercials. I like working out how to organically weave a brand's message into the writing process. It's like an improv show, where comics ask the audience to throw out a word and a skit is built around it.

As an actor, you only get to work 15 minutes an hour; as a director you're fully immersed. It's incredibly more complex and challenging and I love it. I'm sort of a glutton for work and to direct something that I'm acting in feeds the vein.

When you know your mom and dad are doing things that are not idyllic, as far as your desire to defer to a parental ideal, you start to see your parents as peers, perhaps, and that's not the healthiest thing at that early an age.

In most professions, if you stay at the office an extra four hours every day, you're gonna impress the boss. You're gonna get that promotion; you're gonna get that raise. You're gonna at least have job security. But with acting, if you're really ambitious and you have a good work ethic and are really good at your job, it might not really matter.

I think things that are really, really not good are easy to see. But films that are decent can either be made good or great based on the execution. At the end of the day, it's always a crapshoot about the execution, the level of taste, in any department.

And I've always loved commercials. I like working out how to organically weave a brand's message into the writing process. It's like an improv show, where comics ask the audience to throw out a word and a skit is built around it.

Kids want you to take them to whatever kid movie is opening, and you just hope it's good because you're going to buy a ticket, no matter what. If it's no good, you kind of drape your arm over your kid so they don't get smashed, and you take a little nap.

Television is much more of a producer's writer's medium, so a lot of the time, when you're directing a television show, they have a color palette on set or a visual style and dynamic that's already been predetermined, and you just kind of have to follow the rules.

I'm a great believer in stunt doubles. They do an amazing job.

Many people out there don't have a choice in choosing their friends and the people they're being manipulated by. Thank God, I have that choice. I can use my judgment and choose.

I don't believe in stereotypes. Most of the time, stereotypes are just that.

The good thing about being an actor, and the gift of being an actor, is that you are beautifully forced to see the world with different eyes.

When you are portraying somebody that has a very specific emotional weight, you feel like you're really starting to abandon your own body and go to someplace else.

The background - your own history - is way more important than what you can achieve as a professional.

I can't imagine what it would be like being James Bond 24 hours. That must be exhausting.

When I was born, there was a very isolated idea of what it meant to be a man or a woman, and you belonged to one gender or the other.

I don't like to talk about my personal life.

I've always belonged to the street, and I always will. It's in my DNA.

You know I don't like to talk about my personal life.

Even in the darkest regions, people have discovered their right of freedom.

I believe in people.

When you put gas in your car you are making a political statement, because you are supporting the empires that control and continue the destruction of some countries.

Life is not perfect.

There is no good side to celebrity.

Bond is the longest-running franchise ever and there's a reason for that: they are action movies but they are also touched by current events without being political or too serious.

I truly thank whoever's up there for giving me the opportunity to be loved.

The fact that I like to make characters doesn't mean that I like to watch my characters being made, my performance.

I have a man and a woman in the same body; I have the male and female values in the same body.

I'm happily married.

There is no middle ground in Hollywood; you're a failure or you're a success. That mentality is wild.

When you know people are really at peace with who they are and what they do, they collaborate and want to help you to improve.

I retired from rugby because I was old and getting really slow.

You want to do your job well so that people in the future say, 'OK, he's not bad, let's hire him.'

Really, I don't see this heart-throb thing at all.

I used to be a good party boy. I'm old. I'm an old man. You pay the consequences. I'm just fine with a couple of drinks, no more than that.

The personal thing is something I have never talked about. And I never will. That is prohibited. My job is public. But that's it. When you're not working, you don't have an obligation to be public.

Every time I wake up, I see myself like somebody beat me up.

My concern is to continue respecting my work as I've done since I began as an actor and I could only do that if I'm strong enough to keep on doing what I think best in an artistic way.

We live in the moment now where this whole movie business is crazy.

An award doesn't necessarily make you a better actor.

Celebrity is very weird.

I don't really care where movies come from as long as they're worth making.

We actors always say how difficult and physically demanding a role was. But give me a break, it's only a movie.

What does my performance have to do with Russell Crowe's? Nothing. If I play Gladiator and we all play Gladiator with Ridley Scott in the same amount of time, maybe we have a chance to see who did it best.

Some quality performances and movies have a chance to be rewarded, but it's not like it's a bible.

The award is important in order to bring people to the movie theater. That's the only principle meaning of any award.

I live in Spain. Oscars are something that are on TV Sunday night. Basically, very late at night. You don't watch, you just read the news after who won or who lost.

I will work with a director who has good material because at the end of the day, that's what counts.

But don't call me an actor. I'm just a worker. I am an entertainer. Don't say that what I am doing is art.

I want to act because I don't know how to do anything else.