I hate the whole reluctant sex-symbol thing. It's such bull. You see these dudes greased up, in their underwear, talking about how they don't want to be a sex symbol.

There is currency to celebrity, or celebrity is a currency... You can spend it in a lot of ways, or you can squander it. You can be taxed, as well. I really started thinking long and hard about how to use that currency as long as I had it.

I get to the point where I feel relaxed, and then I just shoot a ton of material and make a lot of different choices.

One guy told me I was a great actor, I just would never be on the cover of a magazine.

Every single director-actor I talked to, from Warren Beatty to Clint Eastwood to George Clooney, said the biggest mistake they made is not shooting enough footage of themselves.

One of the differences between now and then is that the idea of body image is a much bigger issue now. Back then, just being kind of heavy and barrel-chested passed for heroic. Now, you wouldn't dare to play a hero without a lot of dieting and various specialised abdomen machines. But that was one of the things which was interesting about it and I did want to portray because there's good and bad.

I've never held myself up particularly high when I had movies that worked, and I never held myself all that low when I had failures.