Quotes from Ben Mendelsohn

In a very real sense, all you do when you're shooting film or television is you shoot a scene, and then you shoot another scene, and then you shoot another scene.

The thing about acting is you have to wait to be asked to the dance.

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 suspect, for a lot of people who become actors, there's a feeling of wanting to be someone other than who they actually are.

'Star Wars' is populated by so many great types; who wouldn't want to be a Han Solo kind of dude?

It would be excellent to do a 'Star Wars.'

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 very happy to be Han Solo, and I would have been happy to have gone out with Princess Leia.

$3,000 from a residual cheque was all I made one year.

You can certainly extend your adolescence. There's people that are very good at extending it indefinitely.

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

It's good to surf whatever waves are going on right there as they're happening.

When you're a young boy, you're looking at older men for role modelling. Before I loved De Niro, I loved Clint Eastwood; I loved John Wayne. And James Bond.

I don't know that it exists, the perfect family. It's always complicated.

For me it's a compliment, playing baddie characters. I take it as a compliment.

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

'Animal Kingdom' is a significant comet, and it's cast a tail. It's very hard to see anything post that happening without that.

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

I'm very well known in the industry and relatively well known by people who are aficionados and what not, but outside of that - no.

'Slow West' is a western, and it's sort of a twist on the genre stylistically, I think, from what I understand going in.

I grew up loving the John Wayne and Clint Eastwood westerns.

I think difficult characters are very rewarding to do. They often have facets to them and this and that.

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.

If you've been working since you were a teenager and working at a reasonably decent level, then you don't expect that you're going to be firmly in your 40s and start moving up in the world, if you like.

I wanted to keep working because work was essentially fantastic - you got to be around people, you got to be in a family, and that family changed from job to job. It was like being in the circus.