I’ve been lucky, so lucky, working with [...] Rachel (McAdams) on The Notebook. A big draw for me, when I do a film, is who am I going to be opposite, because there’s only so much I can do on my own.

There is this idea in Hollywood, and I've seen it work for people, where the unspoken rule is 'Do two for them and one for yourself.' And that's kind of considered a fact. I've never really found that to be true for me. I've gotten more opportunities out of working on things I believed in than I ever did on things that weren't special to me.

I never was that boy who loved gangster films, but when I was growing up, I was obsessed with the detective Dick Tracy. It was one of my favourite movies as a kid, and he really inspired me. I would have loved to be part of that golden age of Hollywood in the 1940s. It made me want to become an actor.

You can't make a movie for everybody. You can't go into it trying to alienate people, but you have to assume that you're going to.

I tried to find something real in essentially something thats science fiction or something-for me, anyways-not having an experience like this.

Women are mad at me. A girl came up to me on the street and she almost smacked me. Like, ‘How could you? How could you let a girl like that go?’ I feel like I want to give people hugs, they seem so sad. Rachel and I should be the ones getting hugs! Instead, we’re consoling everybody else.

I'm Canadian. I think that's it. When you're a Canadian, you're always watching America from the outside, from afar.