Your primary tools, as an actor, are observation and imagination. You can pretty much get everything you need from that, and you do. It brings back that element of pretend.

I've always been curious as to why one man jumps out of a fox-hole with a grenade and charges a machine gun nest and his buddy, who sits right there next to him, sits there cowering. My feeling is that the different is tiny between the two.

I can't imagine a more profoundly exciting experience than I had working on 'Avatar.' And whether I'm ever part of it again, I'll always be very proud that I was a part of it.

With correction, and given the chance, 'Terra Nova' can and will deliver seasons of transcendent images and story-telling. 'Terra Nova' is the Hubble Telescope of television.

On some level acting is the art of pretend and you have to have a highly cultivated sense of imagination. You have to be able to see things that aren't there no matter what aspect of acting, whether it's green screen, whether it's on stage, whether it's anything else, whether you're working on the radio.

I don't want to, in any way, characterize a race or a people or get accused of racial profiling, but the Irish, as lyrical and romantic as they can be in their poetry, they can be every bit as repressed in their personal relations.

There are themes that somehow stir me and that I find very interesting. They're themes that deal with leadership, the nature of bravery and courage, and how to define those.