BEN MENDELSOHN

There's very little different between the way the government operates in America and the way criminals do.

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

I don't have memorabilia but try to take a bit of wardrobe, usually because they dress me better than I dress myself.

It's a tougher gig than what people think it is. The proper, real, genuine, worldwide movie stars don't get a lot of downtime from the world outside. That's a tougher price, I think, than what people's fantasy of fame account for.

'Animal Kingdom' is a lot of things, but it's not heartwarming.

It would be excellent to do a 'Star Wars.'

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.

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

The people I've encountered who are really dangerous in my life don't go around with their fangs drawn - they are dangerous because of the way they interpret what's going on.

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

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.

'Animal Kingdom' is a significant comet, and it's cast a tail. It's very hard to see anything post that happening without that.

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

I don't believe in the transformation myth, where if you have more success, life changes for you.

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

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.

I've spent various periods of my career being thought of as various things, various degrees of substance and ideas.

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.

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.

'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.

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.

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

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

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