- I just have my own taste, and I just try and stick with that. I'm just trying to play as many characters as I can for as long as I have an opportunity to.
- I like working with actresses, and I like women a lot, not for obvious reasons, but just in that that there's so much about what they bring to the scene that keeps it so interesting. Their instincts are so different, and they never explain them to you.
- I think we just knew that we had a movie when Rachel walked in the room.
- I've learned it's important not to limit yourself. You can do whatever you really love to do, no matter what it is.
- I always wanted to entertain. When I was 6, a scrawny, scrawny kid, I'd get in my red speedo and do muscle moves. I actually thought I was muscular. I didn't know everyone was laughing at me.
- I mean, God bless The Notebook, it introduced me to one of the great loves (Rachel McAdams) of my life. But people do Rachel and me a disservice by assuming we were anything like the people in that movie. Rachel and my love story is a hell of a lot more romantic than that.
- All my characters are me. I'm not a good enough actor to become a character. I hear about actors who become the role and I think 'I wonder what that feels like'. Because for me, they're all me. I relate to these characters because aspects of their personality are like me. And I just turn up the parts of myself that are them and turn down the parts that aren't.
- For now, I'm just going to keep doing the work and hope I don't get fired. If people want to put me up on their walls, I'll love it.
- I also think that something interesting comes out when you do something that you're afraid of, so I try to take things that I'm not sure that I can do. And this was certainly one of them. I didn't feel like I was right for this at all, and I wondered how to find truth in a fairy tale.
- You know how sometimes department stores have these things where, if you win, you get 10 minutes and go in and take anything you want from the store? That's basically what I'm doing. I'm running in and just trying to grab as many characters as possible before they pull the plug on me.
- It's nice to be around people that have a sense of the world around them, that are, in general, more conscious and conscientious. It was important for me to get an outside look at America even though I grew up in Canada, it's an incredible country and I love it, but it's so close. It's like being too close to a Monet or something. You have to move back. Going to New Zealand helped me to get a read on this place that the whole world was obsessed with.
- I also think that something interesting comes out when you do something that you're afraid of, so I try to take things that I'm not sure that I can do. And this was certainly one of them. I didn't feel like I was right for this at all, and I wondered how to find truth in a fairy tale.
- For now, I'm just going to keep doing the work and hope I don't get fired. If people want to put me up on their walls, I'll love it.
- I think American news is pretty tragic in general. I can't tell the difference between "Entertainment Tonight" (1981) and the news. It's all about ratings. They are trying to sum it all up pretty quickly and try to act as if they understand it.
- The theme for me is love and the lack of it. We all want that and we don't know how to get it, and everything we do is some kind of attempt to capture it for ourselves.
- I understand the studios, in the sense that if they're going to spend $100 million on a film, they want to make sure they're gonna get that back . . . but I don't know how to guarantee you you're going to make that money back, and I'm uncomfortable working with those kind of numbers.
- There is this idea in Hollywood, and I've seen it work for people, where the unspoken rule is 'Do two for them and one for yourself.' And that's kind of considered a fact. I've never really found that to be true for me. I've gotten more opportunities out of working on things I believed in than I ever did on things that weren't special to me.
- All my characters are me. I'm not a good enough actor to become a character. I hear about actors who become the role and I think 'I wonder what that feels like'. Because for me, they're all me. I relate to these characters because aspects of their personality are like me. And I just turn up the parts of myself that are them and turn down the parts that aren't.
- (On this acting hero) Gene Wilder is my Marlon Brando. Gene Wilder will break your heart and make you laugh at the same time. And that's deep. There's something really profound about what he's able to do. It's transcendent. It's everything. He gives you everything at once and you have to decide what you feel about it.
- I mean, God bless The Notebook (2004), it introduced me to one of the great loves (Rachel McAdams) of my life. But, people do Rachel and me a disservice by assuming we were anything like the people in that movie. Rachel and my love story is a hell of a lot more romantic than that.
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Movie/TV title: The Believer (2001)
Movie/TV title: The Notebook (2004)
Movie/TV title: Stay (2005)
Movie/TV title: Half Nelson (2006)
Movie/TV title: Lars and the Real Girl (2007)
Movie/TV title: Fracture (2007)