When a new project comes along, I want to know that the experience is going to be challenging and exciting. Part of me is going to be drawn to doing something new and also the satisfaction of intellectual curiosity.

If you are at a boys' school, especially, there is a level of bravado that you have to keep up otherwise you'll get picked on.

I feel so grateful to my mother and father for a happy childhood. There are things I now understand that they were able to give me that are very special.

In 'Thor,' that was my own hair. I grew it out. But I have naturally curly, blonde hair, so I'll never look like that. By the time I got to 'The Avengers,' I had come off two other films, which required me to have it very short. So I dyed it again and it was long enough to use a part of my hairline.

Fame is weird and amorphous and unpredictable.

I think everyone should pursue their dreams. Whether you want to play football, act, sing, become a writer or whatever you have burning inside you as you’re growing up, you should pursue it.

Our job is to represent the truth of human nature, whether you're playing a tender love story that's set in a coffee shop or whether you're in 'The Avengers,' which is set in a Manhattan which is exploding.