Ben Mendelsohn

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

“For mine, the villains of the piece were always important. In a traditional sense, that's always an important role.”

“I have an intensive relationship with the thing that I'm working on, and I hope that comes through. It's better for me to not worry about the things I can't fix once they're done.”

“Typically, I'll wake up at 4:30 in the morning. It's just the continual jet lag residue, just weird sleeping hours.”

“The first 'Star Wars' film was enormously important. I grew up right smack-bang in the sweet spot of all of those. It's true cinema magic. It's fair to say that, as a kid, I would have been...”

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

“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.”

“I came from the outer suburbs of Melbourne, so you do learn how to survive in that environment.”

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

“Let me give you a little Mendelsohn 101: I came up in television in the early- to mid- 1980s in Australia.”

“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...”

“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...”

“I think now there's much more of a confessional culture. That's not my bag. I come from a slightly older school of thought: 'give 'em nothin.' You don't plead guilty.”

“It's got a lot more room for nuance and an assumption that people have started from the beginning. 'Bloodline' ends up being like a really good novel.”

“'The Outlaw Josey Wales' is one I watched again and again and again in the early days of VHS.”

“I generally feel like people that are doing the wardrobe know more about wardrobe than I do, and they have an overview.”

“In Australia, even the darkest subject matter has a little pinch of humor. A little sweet to make the sour go down.”

“As an outsider in America, you do see the kind of hypocrisy that's rampant there.”

“At any period of an actor's life, it's fairly likely that they'll be cast in ways that are reminiscent. That's the way it goes.”

“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.”