Getting the call from Ridley Scott made me think that sometimes you just need to go to work.
— Joel Edgerton
One wrong move, and you destroy your career.
I grew up being taught, 'Do unto others as they would do unto you.' I would get scolded for not being polite.
I remember being bullied at school, and I remember being cruel to other kids.
I have this theory that alpha males are actually not alpha males. They're actually very scared - particularly scared of competition from a lot of men.
I love so much what I do that I spend so much time thinking about it, and then I go home, and then I'm thinking about it, so it's nice sometimes when a movie is over, and then the niggling feelings about whether you've did it right or not start to ebb away.
I always kind of aim with the action stuff to make it feel like, as an audience member, you're experiencing what the people are experiencing. As soon as you go into slow-mo or repeated edits, shooting it like it's a stunt, it takes it out of that reality. The more real you make that stuff, the more tense it will be.
I wanted to make a redemptive thriller that didn't end with some kind of big, crazy shootout and blood spill, but more of a collision of ideas and a discussion of ethics.
I worked for a big department store, and strangely, on my first day, they put me in charge of Christmas wrapping. I didn't know how to wrap a present and make it not look like it fell off a truck.
Sometimes Hollywood manages to knock a movie in its teeth so hard that it never manages to get back up.
I couldn't do 'Eleanor Rigby' because it was clashing with another project - something I was going to go do - something with Liv Ullmann.
There's a stage where you're desperate to get a job, and you're waving your hands in a sea of nothingness, going, 'Please, please, please! I'm over here - give me a job!'
If I knew my schedule a month ahead, I'd be so bored.
I find it strange when people can't relate to kids, because you were a kid once, you know?
As an actor, I'm constantly striving to find the darkness in the lighter characters and the lightness in the darker characters.
Even to this day, when I think about the fact that I'm in this 'Star Wars' world, that I'm a half-brother to Darth Vader and an uncle to Luke Skywalker, it's too hard to wrap my head around.
I'm a great believer in not sitting around waiting for the right part to come around, but jumping in and building it for yourself.
Really, no-one is bad except for serial killers and dictators.
Where does guilt and punishment lie, and are we not more expressive over remorse or guilt when other people see the badness in us?
All I can say is working with Ridley Scott is a dream come true.
I often put any project I write in a different decade just to roll the thought around in my head. There's a thriller I've written that I think would be nice to set in the '70s or '80s, just to take cell phones away from the movie. There's nothing like the piercing ring of an old-school telephone to really scare an audience.
Sometimes I think being an actor is like being a dog for a director; it's like they throw a stick, and you want to fetch it and bring it back to them. You want a pat on the head for it.
Actors want to act; actors want to emote. It's like the emotional equivalent of tearing your shirt off and screaming to the heavens: you want to express, and you want to be seen to be expressing.
There's never been a mathematical equation that says a good experience making a movie equates to a good movie, or a bad experience on a set is going to lead to a bad movie.
You have to stick to what you love and purse that at all costs. Don't choose money first; it won't make you happy.
You can road-test relationships.
Having rain on your tuxedo is a pretty good reminder that you're not James Bond.
I'm not saying I'm a family guy, but maybe that's what people see in me: some kind of paternal quality.
So many people wait around for funding, and if they're unsuccessful, they don't make the film; if you've got a good idea, that seems so pointless. There's always a way of doing it; you've just got to find it.
I tend to take on a lot of things. And then they all just seem to happen at once. Or maybe I'm not good at saying 'No'. But the juggling's fun.
I really like kids.
There's a certain relief to just being the guy who puts on the costume and walks onset and gets to prance or stomp around in a Ridley Scott or Baz Luhrmann movie.
I'd never really imagined myself as an action star.
Gene Hackman was a superstar in the '70s - with that face!
Polo is like playing golf with a saddle, and there are a lot of moving parts.
I really believe guilt finds its way out of a person.
I was a good boy; I was never in trouble for anything.
When you're constantly involved in domination, what you're really looking for is constant highs.
I think the great thing about religion is it's there to teach us the good path and that we're all equal, that we should be treated as such.
I think the great thing about characters is the ways that they can be surprising. I mean, sometimes you think you've got a lock on a personality, even just in life, and then they'll shock you by their behavior.
Some of us are better at owning the responsibility of our actions than others.
I don't call acting a real job, and writing is a hobby.
To me, Hollywood seems a little bipolar. Things happen; things don't happen. Someone's in a movie; someone's not in a movie. I've learned not to build my expectations.
If I'm going to work for twelve hours a day, I want twelve hours of awesomeness!
I never sing out loud because I'm afraid people will go, 'Shut up!'
Stunt work offers a diversity of roles and, while I'm used to anonymity, I really like showing off and performing in front of camera, though I know my limitations.
I would have happily done 'Bourne Legacy,' but a lot of decisions are made for you.
We are people in circumstances who make choices that we think are right at the time.
Making a movie like 'Felony' is hard work because you're really putting your own ideas on the screen. You can't hide behind some other person's script; you're saying, 'This is my brain, and I want you to know what I think'.'
I never really think too much about my voice.
