Quotes from Christian Slater

'Pump Up the Volume' was a film and character that I really responded to. That was a movie about a guy trying to take down the establishment using a ham radio. I feel 'Mr. Robot' has a similar value. This show is about taking down a global empire. I was an anarchist then. I'm getting to be an anarchist again.

I'm trying not to put myself into anything I'm not 100 percent confident about.

After I did Untamed Heart I wanted to do a film that was outrageous. I really wanted to do, you know, a performance. I don't want to allow my image to rule the choices that I make.

If I make a move, like raise my eyebrows, some critic says I'm doing Nicholson. What am I supposed to do, cut off my eyebrows?

The first job I had was a Pampers commercial. And I used to go with my father whenever he would do a performance. I remember clinging to his legs, saying, 'Please. Take me with you.'

It still amazes me when I look at some of the films I've been a part of, and some of the people I've gotten to meet and work with. I also look back sometimes and realize that I was lucky to have lived through them and even to have survived them, at times.

As I've gotten to know myself over the years, I realised I'm kind of a sweet, sensitive guy, a shy guy, and communication is not something I'm so good at.

I have that glass-half-empty syndrome, and it takes a great deal of effort to climb out of the hole of darkness that I choose to live in mentally.

The Internet definitely could be a weapon of mass destruction - it's not going to come in a bomb, it's going to come as a cyberattack. It's pretty amazing to see what a small group of people can do if they really know how to control the universe.

'Heathers' was probably the first time when I started to notice that people were opening doors for me and giving me tables at restaurants, regardless of what I was wearing. A whole world opened up to me that was shocking and weird and different, and I enjoyed it, and, you know, I took great advantage of it at times.

An actor equals, sometimes, an entitled baby. People take care of things for me, and they pay greater attention to things than I was ever capable of doing. But in the last few years, I have learned a great deal more about taking care of things. I pay my own bills now.

Well, obviously, as soon as I'd finished the script I read a lot of books on Winston Churchill, and started to gain weight and really prepare emotionally, mentally and physically for the role.

I don't think of myself as offbeat and weird. As a kid, I saw myself as the type of guy who would run into a burning building to save the baby.

There's something about doing theatre in London - it sinks a little bit deeper into your soul as an actor. It's something about the tradition of theatre, about performing on the West End stage.

Actors sometimes immerse themselves into it so deeply that the line between who they are and their character can become blurred. For me, I think it's just about getting clearer on my whole life and who I am in order to make it possible for me to play whatever character is presented to me at a particular time.

I am a gypsy, in a way. It's a condition of my profession.

Success can be a very difficult thing to deal with.

Some of the characters that I played as a kid were rebellious teenagers, and people would see those performances and project a particular image onto me. And 90 percent of the time, I would do everything I could to live up to that sort of image and be that individual.

As you get older you learn some balance and mediation in your life - that's where I am right now. I feel pretty comfortable about things.

I'm blown away by the graphical detail of today's games. I can't imagine that it's going to get any better, but it's just going to continually progress and soon we'll be living in that world.

Hopefully, that people could see a progression in my performances because that's how it's always felt to me.

I'm certainly grateful that there were projects that I did that people responded to. It would be a nightmare if it were the other way around. But it's sometimes a little disheartening.

The '80s was a wild decade, and I had some fantastic times. And I did some really fun work.

I have brought a PS2 on set with me before. But games can be really addicting, and that's dangerous. So I tend to keep it fairly limited on a certain level.