Quotes from Stellan Skarsgard

People don't want to read subtitles.

I started acting as an amateur when I was a kid, but I wanted to become a diplomat. It was self-centered and weird, but I had this idea of going out in the world and solving conflicts and making the world a better place. But I kept on acting, and eventually, I just dropped out of school and continued acting.

A film doesn't exist until it meets its audience.

It's a disease we have that we think that everything is explainable. It's a merchandising idea because you can sell explanations and cures for everything, but it doesn't work like that. It's very hard to understand everything.

We were working under very harsh conditions on 'Zero Kelvin.' We were up there in the Arctic, closer to the North Pole than to a hospital. Sometimes you had to sleep in small Arctic tents with guns to protect yourself from polar bears and stuff.

Some actors are what I call more like mirror actors, which means that they do a performance at home in front of the mirror, and then they go deliver it. I'm not that type.

Because of ignorance, I wasn't a big fan of Marvel. I hadn't read the magazines. They were not as big in Europe as they are in the United States. They're more a part of modern American mythology. I know more about the original Thor than the Marvel Thor.

My parents were rather unconventional and did not accept rules unless they thought they were defendable. They were atheists when Sweden was a very Christian country.

I played a heap of snow in a school play. I was under a sheet, and crawled out when spring came. I often say I'll never reach the same artistic level again.

I think I was 13 years old when my father put in my hands 'The Spy Who Came in from the Cold.' It was the first real adult book I ever read, and it opened a new world.

With Fincher, you can take chances and try things. And what happens is that any pretension and preparation you've done, all the square, intellectual work, you can't keep that up for 40 takes. It breaks down, and new things start popping up. This, for me, is the most exciting thing about film-making.

It's good to pay high taxes - you have free schools, free universities. It's a much more decent society than those where everybody pays their own way, and some people don't get anything.

When you work in Norway, you actually have to have a contract about lunches because Norwegians don't eat lunch normally, so they just throw out a loaf of bread and some coldcuts.

Even with limited success as an actor, you usually have a more interesting life than in many other professions, so it's not an unreasonable choice.

There is no overacting, only untrue acting.

The ethical code of my upbringing was be good to people and try not to hurt them. You don't need a god to tell you that.

I treat everyone as equals. I can't work if I'm not having fun, and I can't have fun if not everyone is happy.

Casting a film, you can have the greatest actors in a film and it doesn't work. It's a combination of all of the elements.

When I had kids, I became a better actor. I just stole from them.

There will always be storytelling, whether it's on the big silver screen, or it's your television or your iPhone or whatever, people will keep on telling stories.

I'm so full of useless information; I'm the kind of person that collects useless information. I like to know everything!

Acting is such a strange, vague profession, but my kids know it's hard labour.

My father used to stress that he valued us all as individuals, but that no one in the world was worth more or less than anyone else. This was a good principle to establish in a large family.

There was a Russian director named Elem Klimov, who did his films during the communist days. They were constantly struggling with the authorities and to be allowed to express themselves. But he did one of the best war movies I've ever seen - it's called 'Come and See.'