Quotes

On the role of an actor in film: "It comes down to the fact that you supply the blue, and they supply the other colors and mix them with your blue, and maybe there's some blue left in the painting and maybe there isn't. Maybe there wasn't supposed to be any there in the first place. So have some fun and make a good blue and walk away."

I don't plan [my career]; I wait and hope the right thing will find me.

Photography, painting or poetry those are just extensions of me, how I perceive things, they are my way of communicating.

I'm the one who said yes to these movies, and now I'm having to pay the price for it. I mean if I had my druthers, I wouldn't do any movies anymore, frankly.

I was on my way out of a Sunday rehearsal. When I was walking out of the gym, all sort of sweaty, half in street clothes and half in Aragorn's clothes, waving the sword around, trying to keep a mental picture of what we've just done. Just walking down the street, down to where my car was parked, on a Sunday afternoon, waving the sword around, looking like some desperate Rasputin character. Cops car comes: there's been some report...

I'm not 23 years old and I don't have plans to make another 20 big Hollywood movies or something.

Well, I certainly wouldn't be here and my face wouldn't be up there on a poster if it wasn't for the success of Lord of the Rings. It's just a fact: film-making, finance, life.

Seeing who you are playing with is a relief. In The Lord of the Rings we did a lot of things when there was nothing there.

But I can also publish books by interesting painters and writers and I can afford to do so because my own books sell and there's a public that's interested in that. And the public have gone to see exhibitions I've had - more than they would have.

There is no star in LOTR. The Fellowship is a union.

(On David Cronenberg) It's comforting to be working with someone you know will make a good movie.

Some people will say, 'Ahhh, he's over the top, it's gratuitous,' [but] I disagree completely. He's one of the most responsible filmmakers today as far as showing violence - which there's very little of compared to other movies. It just stays with you because he shows very little of it. It just stays with you and he's very direct about it. He shows you what happens, and what the consequences are physically and emotionally, in some cases; certainly he does in Quá Khứ Tội Ác (2005), and also here [in Hang Quỷ Đông Âu (2007)], that makes him very honest - on David Cronenberg.

Life is short... I like to pay attention while I'm going through it. Whatever I see, like anyone else, I'm going to filter it and create my own idea of what it is. - on painting, creating music, writing poetry, and taking photographs in addition to acting.

I'd like to, when it's all said and done, say that I have at least a few stories that I feel proud of. I don't just want to look back and say, 'I was on x number of magazines.' As far as money goes, there's a saying in Denmark: 'Your last suit doesn't have any pockets.' You can't take it with you. You can make all the money you want, but who cares?

(On his research for Hang Quỷ Đông Âu (2007)) I found some materials, some books and also a documentary a friend of mine made called "The Mark of Cain". It's a hard thing to do but she went into maximum-security prisons in Russia and spoke to people like Nikolai. And I went to Russia as well. I read and listened to and looked up anything I could that had to do with Russians even loosely connected with this story. The more Russian I could be and seem authentically, the better it would be.

Be kind. It's worthwhile to make an effort to learn about other people and figure out what you might have in common with them.

Y'know, I had a preconceived idea of Freud being very stiff, very formal, a wizened old man, a very rigid personality. And he was anything but. He was very gregarious. Great conversationalist. Someone who lived by his wits.

[on Người Hobbit: Hành Trình Vô Định (2012)] I went on opening day to see it. I was actually in Argentina, and I went with a bunch of kids and their parents. It was kind of a party atmosphere, it was fun, it was in 3-D, and they had popcorn. I enjoyed it. In particular it was nice to see some of the landscapes I remembered. It was a nice trip down memory lane, where we'd shot near some of the places where I'd gone camping or fishing.

[on The Lord of the Rings trilogy] In the first movie, yes, there's Rivendell, and Mordor, but there's sort of an organic quality to it, actors acting with each other, and real landscapes; it's grittier. The second movie already started ballooning, for my taste, and then by the third one, there were a lot of special effects. It was grandiose and all that, but whatever was subtle in the first movie, gradually got lost in the second and third. Now with The Hobbit, one and two, it's like that to the power of 10.

[on Peter Jackson] Peter, I was sure he would do another intimately-scaled film like Tạo Vật Của Thiên Đường (1994), maybe with this project about New Zealanders in the First World War he wanted to make, but then he did King Kong (2005). And then he did Hình Hài Dấu Yêu (2009) and I thought that would be his smaller movie. But the problem is, he did it on a ninety million dollar budget. That should have been a fifteen million dollar movie. The special effects thing, the genie, was out of the bottle, and it has him.

[on David Cronenberg] [He] has helped me do really good work, better than other directors. Maybe because he understands my process and because we have some things in common in terms of our sensibility - the kinds of books we like to read, our sense of humor is similar.

[on awards] I don't' think awards make you better, they don't really have any effect. They can have a negative effect on your career, or they can have a positive effect in terms of business, but I don't think they can help you do the job better. I think it's kind of a crapshoot.

[on Quá Khứ Tội Ác (2005)] If not the best, it's one of the best movies I've ever been in. There's no such thing as a perfect movie, but in the way that that script was handled, the way it was shot ... it's a perfect film noir movie, or it's close to perfect I should say.

I always think of movie-making as a team sport.

I don't really select what I'm going to do based on the budget or the genre or the nationality of the project. I'm looking for stories that I'd like to go see in the movie theatre.

I've always appreciated, more and more as the years have gone by, the fact that movie-making contains all the arts: Writing, design, fashion, photography, work on accents... There's so many things to learn from. It's a complete universe, artistically.

I don't think violence is ever excusable. It's most often a metaphor for something that's going on in a relationship or in the person's understanding - or misunderstanding - of their place in society.

Half the fun-no, really all the fun-is in the preparation.

Everything begins with stillness, with silence. Movies are light and time. Before the movie begins, there is darkness and nothing is happening. When the movie starts, the clock starts, and we see. And, unless it is a silent movie, we hear. From then on, it is all give and take with the initial stillness, the initial darkness, and nothing can ever be entirely unseen, unnoticed or immobile. Trusting that, letting yourself breathe and move in unison with the tension between "nothing is" and "anything could be," allows you to communicate whatever you can imagine communicating, whether you appear to be still or are moving as fast as you can.

I like movies that end [with] "...And now what?" I like it when they don't tie everything up.

I just think that the more realistic and specific you are with the details, the more universal the story becomes.

As an actor, for me it's always the story first. I've heard some actors say, "With this director or this director, I would do anything with him or with her, 'cause I admire them so much. I don't care what it is, all they would have to say is, 'Do you wanna be in a movie?" Yes! I don't even have to read it." I'm not like that. For me it's the story first. And if I don't like the story, I don't care who's directing it.

Sometimes if you're left wanting more, that's not such a bad thing. Same thing as in a friendship or especially in an intimate relationship. To be in too much of a hurry sometimes, sometimes maybe it's better not to be, to get to know somebody a little bit without thinking about it. That sort of 'instant gratification' approach to movie making, to a movie audience... sometimes it's better for you not to get everything, or get everything so clearly, handed to you right away. It's better to think for yourself.

As soon as I know I'm going to do a part, the first thing I ask myself is: 'What happened between birth and page one of the script?' There's no end to what you can imagine or figure out for yourself about that... That's the foundation for me, no matter what approach I need to take.

Being an actor is to lie in the most honest way possible.

The character gives me something and I give him something.

I love props in movies in general-props have a power. I always place great importance on them. There's things that happen-there's movies where there's been a scarf, or a bandanna, that has its story, and it goes from one character to another, or a hat that has a story.

I end up having notebooks full of things, quotes, ideas, historical facts in this case, and even clothes, and books, and things, and then you put it in a big pile. The closer you get to shooting, you take this one away, you take that one away, and then the pile gets smaller and smaller. Then it's time to shoot, and you only have a few things, but they represent all the other things. You know what I mean? It's there if you need it, in your mind.