I just go where I'm sent and I do what I'm told. I listen to the highest voices within me. I don't feel the least bit courageous. I don't feel like I deserve any medals. I don't feel that I'm any more special than anybody else who's out there.
I think it's important that kids see another kid - Coraline - who doesn't have guns, she doesn't have super-powers, she's not a super-genius. To see a pretty normal kid - I mean, she's probably a little more curious, a little more stubborn, but she's a real kid - go up against something that's truly dark and evil and powerful. And she does win.
Until I came along all the leading men were handsome, but luckily they wrote a lot of stories about the fellow next door.
Larger-than-life roles have never excited me. I'd rather play someone real who goes through obstacles and becomes a hero.
After all, the ordinary hero hiding in each of us is often the most powerful catalyst for change.
I like playing average guys who have a little extra something.
I didn't set out to be a regular hero.
You always know about the guys who are sorta like the moral winner. Then, all the sudden, a guy comes up - the average, hardworking young man - and pulls off something that's, you know, totally unexpected, and in such a dynamic fashion.
Everyone is in awe of the lion tamer in a cage with half a dozen lions-everyone but a school bus driver.
Batman is basically an ordinary guy who had something tragic happen to him when he was young.
I've always been a huge fan of the Batman universe and Batman, since I was born really. I think the reasoning for that is because he doesn't have a superpower - he has no special ability. He's just a regular person, a regular human.
I'm saying to be a hero is means you step across the line and are willing to make a sacrifice, so heroes always are making a sacrifice. Heroes always take a risk. Heroes always deviant. Heroes always doing something that most people don't and we want to change - I want to democratise heroism to say any of us can be a hero.
I'm not interested in superheroes. What about normal people doing extraordinary things?
What's cool about Spider-Man is that it's everybody - anyone, you put on the suit, anyone believes that you're Spider-Man. That's what's charming about the character. He's anyone. He's a huge nerd that ends up being this huge superhero.
Growing up, we never got to see a hero who didn't have superpowers who looked like us, that you could kind of look to and say, 'I could be that guy one day. I could be a patriot. I could be a soldier. I could work in the government and be a hero.'
So, it's cool that, yes, Hal Jordan is a superhero, but my character is a real-world hero in her own life.
Heroes do extraordinary things. What I did was not an extraordinary thing. It was normal.
It's the unusual leading man. Most of the Hollywood leading men are powerful and capable and strong, heroes. He has this vulnerability, he's fragile, he struggles to find a way to live from day to day that we can identify with, that we can understand.
The hero is commonly the simplest and obscurest of men.
I'm sick of over-trained heroes. I'm really bored with that. Guys that are just ripped to shreds and full of skills. That's boring me. Give me the mechanic that picks up a weapon. Now I'm interested. That's my hero.
