With any part you play, there is a certain amount of yourself in it. There has to be, otherwise it's just not acting. It's lying.

An actor shouldn't have to leave the set and go home and write a bunch of stuff for a bunch of other people, the next day. I found it very unpleasant.

It's kind of interesting to experience that kind of a ride after well, essentially so many years of enjoying a career based on failures and then suddenly something clicks. The weird thing is, I never changed a thing. The process is still the process as it ever was. The fact that people decided to go and see a movie that I was in was probably the most shocking thing that I've ever been through.

I realized that it was great to have a job, but it didn't have anything remotely to do with what I was striving for, so why was I doing it?

Ugliness is better than beauty. It lasts longer and in the end, gravity will get us all.

I do believe that you have to bring some degree of truth from yourself to the role [Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street ]in and I'll admit it here, I have shaved a grown man before. I have done it. And it wasn't Tim [Burton].

I still love the layers of cinema whether it's 35mm or 16mm or 8mm, super 8 which I love. I love the grain. If I had my druthers I'd film everything in kodachrome.