In an Indian film that I did when I was 17 years old, and that`s how I got into acting. I was living in Maryland, and some Indians came to Washington DC looking for a blonde kid to appear in an Indian film. It was like a Romeo and Juliet love story between a white American and an Indian girl. They wanted me to stay in India and I did another film over there, they gave me an apartment, a car and I was an Indian movie star at 17. But then I decided to return to America, studied acting, did a lot of theatre.

If I stay alert, then I can challenge myself, and by challenging myself, that helps me to stay alive and to hopefully take something away from the experience.

Harrison Ford - one of my favorite actors - has a wonderful sense of character and depth and uniqueness to him, yet he`s able to just deliver the lines without putting any English on it.

It`s not that the film is violent, it`s that people have an issue with violence right now.

Most of my career up until the last couple of years has basically been a training ground for me. Actors that came up in the `50s and `60s, they had the theater, and television was in its infancy.

You gotta start somewhere. Whether it`s indie film or whatever. Anything`s a start, wherever it happens to fall. But, you can`t just come out of nowhere and jump into an $80 million film, I don`t think you`ll ever see that happen. But I`ve always wanted to do a picture like this. - On his indie career start and Deep Blue Sea (1999).

I try to work with people who are better than me. I for a long time considered myself a journeyman actor where I was learning my skills and honing my craft and waiting for the opportunity for something like this (The Punisher (2004)) to come along. I`m not good at vocalizing what my exact approach is, but I believe in using whatever works and making a sort of amalgamation of a number of different styles or methods to get the job done. I think that`s what a lot of film acting is about. It`s sort of a mongrel like approach these days. We use a number of different theories or beliefs to get you where you need to go. It`s a personal experience. I don`t believe in one particular system or method or another. - On his approach to acting.

It`s kind of true that they just start making the same movie over and over again. It`s also true that the times dictate what kind of movies get made and what kind are not. So I`m always looking for something that`s a little fresh and something that I haven`t seen before.

I`m interested in people that don`t always do the right thing, its much more akin to what I know about life.

I can`t stand to see myself act. It just makes me cringe.

I`m a really huge fan of the old romantic comedies from the `30s and `40s... Huge fan. I love all that stuff.

Earlier on in my career I felt that I had to hide behind a lot of different masks, and showboat ways of performing. Now, that`s a lie. The less I have to hide, the less I have to act.

There was a time when I just did [movies] to get the experience and training. Now I only do them because they are so good that I have no choice, and Stander was a prime example. I feel strongly that I shouldn`t get involved with anything unless I`m 100 per cent committed. I don`t need to go out and work so much. I just want to spend time with my kid. I am turning down as much crap as I can until I find something that really bowls me over.

It was about six months of brutal training, twice a day at the gym, a Navy Seal guy would come over to my house and take me to the firing range, firing live rounds down the range, primary and secondary weapons. Learning edge weapons training, one man military incursions, hand to hand combat, Filipino martial arts as well as Israeli martial arts. It was brutal. - On his physical training for The Punisher (2004).

People lose people, we lose things in our life as we`re constantly growing and changing. That`s what life is is change, and a lot of that is loss. It`s what you gain from that loss that makes life.

I want to make movies that I want to see, and what I miss and I`m not seeing.

To me, it`s the kiss of death when you start winking at the audience as an actor. I just never liked it. I don`t like it when we do monologues, looking into the character.

I just have a respect for my audience. That seems to be pretty logical.

I`m interested in the impact my movies have on people and how it affects them, and what they like and what they don`t like - and what they take away from it. What leaves an impression, you know?

Some of the supporting roles that I`ve done as an actor, I took them because I knew that I would get to watch some of the leading guys in the movies, and also I`d get to work with them.

My dad was an entrepreneurial businessman, and maybe I got some of his ability.

I spent a lot of years just learning my craft and falling down in front of the camera.

I think what makes us human - is our interconnectedness among people. It`s our ability to form and maintain relationships. It`s the barometer by which we call ourselves human.

I still collect comics. I still have a great love and respect for the genre.

I don`t go to work to have fun. I turn up, say my lines, collect my check, and then go home to my wife and kid. I ain`t there to stick around and laugh and cut up with people, and I ain`t there to giggle and play jokes and pull people`s underwear down and stuff.

I think that leading man status opens up a number of doors for you and allows you the opportunity to do a number of different kinds of roles, so I don`t see myself leaving behind character work just because I can headline movies. But it`s certainly more interesting to be where I`m at in my life now, to be a more integral part of the process of creating a film and taking less of a backseat and more of a front seat driver opportunity is interesting to me now.

To stand there and do nothing on film is probably the hardest thing to do.

I`m of the mind that life is a risk, every time you leave your house it`s a risk, and I see no reason to go through life with my hands tied behind my back for any reason. I`d be foolish to let something stop me from doing what I love to do.

When I played Mickey Mantle in 61* (2001) (TV). We were operating on a real high level. All the athletic training that we had to go through was something that you had to condition your body at a high level of athletic skill and we were playing baseball for three months. I was constantly getting injured, pulling muscles in my shoulder, muscles in my back, muscles in my groin, leg muscles. I was always having electric stimulation going at some point in my body. And the swings that we were taking were real. There`s just a high amount of injury when you`re playing a sport at that level.