I came from the outer suburbs of Melbourne, so you do learn how to survive in that environment.

I did 'Quigley Down Under,' which is quite deliberately placed in Australia, which is a Tom Selleck, Alan Rickman, Laura San Giacomo film from '88, I want to say.

I generally feel like people that are doing the wardrobe know more about wardrobe than I do, and they have an overview.

I like to call up ghosts of things past for myself when I'm working a lot.

The first 'Star Wars' film was enormously important. I grew up right smack-bang in the sweet spot of all of those. It's true cinema magic. It's fair to say that, as a kid, I would have been very happy to be Han Solo, and I would have been happy to have gone out with Princess Leia.

Typically, I'll wake up at 4:30 in the morning. It's just the continual jet lag residue, just weird sleeping hours.

$3,000 from a residual cheque was all I made one year.

At any period of an actor's life, it's fairly likely that they'll be cast in ways that are reminiscent. That's the way it goes.

If you're a 'character actor,' you get hired to play baddies a lot.

My general feeling about approach to work is that anyone that's there, they're all there to do the best job they can.

Accents are always difficult in their way, but as long as you're not throwing an audience off with it, then that's all it should be.

I'm very well known in the industry and relatively well known by people who are aficionados and what not, but outside of that - no.

'Animal Kingdom' was an amalgam of two people that I had met-slash-known, not particularly well. They were both very, very scary people for very different reasons.

You feel an affinity with younger actors, because, you know, it's a very insecure job. And it can be a long time before you feel like, you know, things might be all right.

Most young actors, that's all they're trying to do: Get better at acting and be able to keep doing it. And that doesn't work out for most people.

As an actor who has spent twenty years trying to crack America, the day I reached the 'Bloodline' set and found my name on a chair next to Sissy Spacek's was the happiest of my working life.

There are always dimensions, and the way they get expressed is through the writing and the actors and the director you get to work with on that day. But there are always dimensions, outside of really basic stuff for very young people where it needs to be very clear.

I think it's that thing of growing up all the time watching American movies and listening to American music. It hits you in a way that's a lot purer because you are not in that culture that you're watching.

'The Outlaw Josey Wales' is one I watched again and again and again in the early days of VHS.

Fassbender is fearless; he's a fearless actor.

I grew up loving the John Wayne and Clint Eastwood westerns.

I think some of my favorite Australian films were shot by people that are not Australian. And I think when Dean Semler did 'Dances with Wolves,' for instance, that's a very different-looking Western than what you've seen much of before. It's very rich, color-wise. But we've got our own very proud thing going on.

My favorite-ever version of 'King Lear' is the 1971 film by Peter Brooks. He has this enormous fur thing, and it adds enormous gravitas.

In Australia, even the darkest subject matter has a little pinch of humor. A little sweet to make the sour go down.

I think Kyle Chandler is something of a national treasure.

I've been a Ryan Reynolds fan since the first time I saw him.

The way that actors talk about acting is generally quite punishing, and I think actors want to put forward the idea that they do all of this work because, you know, it's a post-De Niro world, when, largely, in fact, it's almost never true.

Let me give you a little Mendelsohn 101: I came up in television in the early- to mid- 1980s in Australia.

I think there's a lot of mythos about what's required in acting.

I have an intensive relationship with the thing that I'm working on, and I hope that comes through. It's better for me to not worry about the things I can't fix once they're done.

It's good to surf whatever waves are going on right there as they're happening.

'Slow West' is a western, and it's sort of a twist on the genre stylistically, I think, from what I understand going in.

One of my earlier films is 'Quigley Down Under.' That was early on in my career, and that was horsey.

You think of 'Outlaw Josey Wales,' you immediately think of the old Indian guy, Sondra Locke, the old lady with the glasses, beautiful old actress.

For me it's a compliment, playing baddie characters. I take it as a compliment.

I think difficult characters are very rewarding to do. They often have facets to them and this and that.

We don't have to kind of be in cycles of conflict if we can find other ways to resolve these issues. We can do things that challenge the conventional thinking that, you know, 'AIPAC doesn't like this,' or 'the Israeli government doesn't like this,' or 'the Gulf countries don't like it.' It's the possibility of improved relations with adversaries.

The complete lack of governance in huge swaths of the Middle East - that is the project of the American establishment.

I profoundly do not believe that the United States could make things better in Syria by being there. And we have an evidentiary record of what happens when we're there - nearly a decade in Iraq.

With the 5-to-4 decision upholding Trump's Muslim ban, arbitrary discrimination is now formal U.S. policy, celebrated by a president who campaigned on a 'total ban' of Muslims entering the United States.

In addition to deep divisions on issues such as trade, climate change, Middle East peace and nuclear weapons, Trump's attacks on leaders such as Trudeau and Merkel and disrespect for NATO and other institutions are prompting a reassessment by allied governments and publics.

By heralding President Xi Jinping's accession to permanent leadership, soliciting Vladimir Putin's reentry into the Group of Seven, and declaring that Kim Jong Un is 'beloved by his people,' Trump legitimizes the very behavior that U.S. presidents opposed for decades.

Irrespective of our foreign policies, for decades, other nations and peoples could see, in the United States, a strong democracy that could maintain social cohesion, welcome immigrants of all backgrounds, and count on stable institutions.

Anthony Bourdain was the one who hooked me on Laos.

After the separation of children from families seeking to join the United States was embraced as the official policy of our government, we should ask ourselves what story we will tell. President Trump's story is one of cruelty - that we may do something unfathomable to deter families from coming to America.

Downturns in migration almost always prove temporary, as people adjust to changes in American enforcement. What doesn't change is the basic human impulse to pursue a better life in a place where they believe it's still possible.

U.S. leadership has been rooted not just in our own belief in American exceptionalism but in the faith of others around the world. By so wantonly discarding that principle, the Trump Administration has done incredible harm to the families they have separated through the state-sponsored child abuse that has been carried out in our name.

Any country must establish control over its borders. That is essential to sovereignty and the security of our citizens. But America, at our best, has balanced that political, legal, and social objective with an appreciation for the benefits of immigration and a sense of respect for the dignity of all human beings.

In the course of a presidency, a U.S. president says millions of words in public. You never know which of them end up cementing a certain impression.

One of the most depressing things about President Donald Trump's decision to roll back elements of the Cuba opening is how predictable it was.