I think difficult characters are very rewarding to do. They often have facets to them and this and that.
— Ben Mendelsohn
One of my earlier films is 'Quigley Down Under.' That was early on in my career, and that was horsey.
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.
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.
In Australia, even the darkest subject matter has a little pinch of humor. A little sweet to make the sour go down.
I grew up loving the John Wayne and Clint Eastwood westerns.
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.
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.
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.
If you're a 'character actor,' you get hired to play baddies a lot.
Typically, I'll wake up at 4:30 in the morning. It's just the continual jet lag residue, just weird sleeping hours.
I generally feel like people that are doing the wardrobe know more about wardrobe than I do, and they have an overview.
'Animal Kingdom' is a significant comet, and it's cast a tail. It's very hard to see anything post that happening without that.
I wanted to keep working because work was essentially fantastic - you got to be around people, you got to be in a family, and that family changed from job to job. It was like being in the circus.
If you're going to be a father and whatnot, yeah, you better be responsible about it as best you can.
'Animal Kingdom' is a lot of things, but it's not heartwarming.
'Star Wars' is populated by so many great types; who wouldn't want to be a Han Solo kind of dude?
For me it's a compliment, playing baddie characters. I take it as a compliment.
'Slow West' is a western, and it's sort of a twist on the genre stylistically, I think, from what I understand going in.
I think there's a lot of mythos about what's required in acting.
I've been a Ryan Reynolds fan since the first time I saw him.
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.
Fassbender is fearless; he's a fearless actor.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
If you've been working since you were a teenager and working at a reasonably decent level, then you don't expect that you're going to be firmly in your 40s and start moving up in the world, if you like.
I suspect, for a lot of people who become actors, there's a feeling of wanting to be someone other than who they actually are.
For mine, the villains of the piece were always important. In a traditional sense, that's always an important role.
I got the first job and kept going. Once I got a job, I very much wanted to keep getting jobs, basically. I did try to learn what I could in those first couple of decades.
I was with my grandmother, while one of my brothers lived with my dad, and one lived with my mom. It wasn't a great situation. Acting was the one good thing I was involved in.
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.
It's good to surf whatever waves are going on right there as they're happening.
Let me give you a little Mendelsohn 101: I came up in television in the early- to mid- 1980s in Australia.
I think Kyle Chandler is something of a national treasure.
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.
'The Outlaw Josey Wales' is one I watched again and again and again in the early days of VHS.
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.
'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.
My general feeling about approach to work is that anyone that's there, they're all there to do the best job they can.
$3,000 from a residual cheque was all I made one year.
I like to call up ghosts of things past for myself when I'm working a lot.
I came from the outer suburbs of Melbourne, so you do learn how to survive in that environment.
When you're a young boy, you're looking at older men for role modelling. Before I loved De Niro, I loved Clint Eastwood; I loved John Wayne. And James Bond.
I got a good-enough adolescence. I mean, there's a sense wherein you skip a part of childhood, too, when you start working at that age I did; I was out working and out of home at 15, paying my own way in the world.
I had a pretty good career at home. What keeps you going is not having a plan B. It's a very good thing. I think if I had a viable plan B, I might not have kept going.
I don't have memorabilia but try to take a bit of wardrobe, usually because they dress me better than I dress myself.
