I think one year I was responsible for 163 screen deaths. That was a pretty good year for me, although it seems better than it actually was at a glance; 72 of those deaths were accounted for in one show.
I think it's obvious when you're watching a movie, and there's people fighting or someone's slipping on the side of the building, that it's fake and it really removes you from it.
I enjoy doing action a lot more because my films have a sense of violence. That's because I have a broad structure, and if I hit someone, it looks believable. Maybe my contemporaries are meeker-looking in comparison.
I think I'm the only actor in the history of film who got to slap Sam Jackson on the face and butt and lived to tell about it.
Although charismatic, James Dean is no Harrison Ford. In the majority of his movies, sooner or later he got the crap beaten out of him.
I'm working harder now than ever before. I couldn't turn down the BBC job because I've never been offered the opportunity of killing three or four people on screen before!
If I can sell out clubs and theaters and play dirtbags in movies, and get blown up in a car or get the crap beat out of me in a movie, that's good for me; I'm good.
My death scene in 'The Salton Sea' is really weird. I mean, I get shot in the head. What experience can you possibly draw from? There's nothing you can compare it to, really.
There was a scene in 'Qubool Hai' where Asad shoots his father. After shooting for it, I was drained completely. At times, my character's mood gets very depressing. Post shoot, it takes a good half hour to get out of character, to leave Asad behind.
The action pictures I've been typically involved with, when somebody gets punched, you really feel the punching, and when somebody gets shot, you really feel the shot.
I would take lots of falls and you know, get shot three or four times and this sort of thing, so all that sort of stuff. And there are tussles with various characters. I like that kind of thing.
After I did 'Brooklyn,' I did about five or six violent films in one way or another, and not always with me being the bad guy, but something violent about it to keep the street cred up, really.
I cannot believe that violence depicted onscreen actually causes people to act out violently. That's oversimplifying the issue. If somebody commits a violent act after seeing violence in a movie, I think the question that needs to be asked is: would that person still have committed the act if he had not seen a violent film?
Yes, he wanted me to do Funny Games before, which I didn't want to do because the film was very theoretical - the way people experience violence on screen. There was very little space for fiction, it was more like a sacrifice for the actors than anything else.
In many films, as many different characters, I've killed many different people.
Once you do something violent in a film, you don't have to do too much. You do it once and the feeling of violence just stays there, do you know what I'm saying?
We have all seen werewolf transformations hundreds of times on screen.
I've played horrible people and done horrible things, and there were moments on 'The Knick' where it was super uncomfortable - some of the things I had to do and say.
When I get cast, I always flip to the end of the script to see if my character gets beaten up or killed.
All you've got to do is turn up and have a few facial tics and be a lunatic and throw someone around the room or blow their brains out and people think it's good acting.
