I've been in the business since I was 16, so I've had a 14-year career. I've always had acting in my blood. Doing this, whatever it is, was something I was drawn to since my earliest memories. Ironically, I lived in Hollywood, but never understood that all it took was getting an agent and being persistent.

People want you to be a crazy, out-of-control teen brat. They want you miserable, just like them. They don't want heroes; what they want is to see you fall.

Like everything, personal relationships and all that stuff is sort of put on ice while you go off to your location for five or six months. So, do I feel more settled in my life and in my work? Absolutely, yeah.

I cheated a lot, because I just couldn't sit and do homework. I usually sat next to someone extremely smart.

I'm never really conscious of saying, "I'm going to take on a specific role to combat a certain image in the public eye." I think that's pretty manipulative and transparent to the public anyway.

I think it's a real danger, as an actor, when you try to make some statement through your career about what the business should be doing or ultimately what your image should be or how you want to be perceived. I look at every project that comes along and say, "Is this something I can sink my teeth into and can do a good job on?" That's really how I choose roles.

People always ask, 'Was it fun? Was it fun working on a movie?' I don't know if that's the operative word. It is challenging and interesting and all those other things, but fun isn't always.