I'm frustrated with Hollywood and television and the movies because they see science fiction as an excuse for eye candy, for lots of great special effects.
It's so great in Hollywood now. You have people past 40 sitting and talking about serious stuff, writing and making movies and TV, but there's laser pistols and superheroes and alien monsters involved. It's viable and mainstream.
When the script for 'The Wrestler' kept coming to me I said, This movie is so good if you put me in the film as a wrestler people are going to say, 'No credibility, Hulk Hogan isn't a good actor,' whatever Hollywood thinks of me.
'Hairspray' was a movie turned Broadway musical turned Hollywood remake, and that is the 'Lion King' circle of life as we know it in Times Square, the creative loop that swings for the stars and sometimes crashes into the upper deck.
I still don't consider myself as going Hollywood. I did a movie because the opportunity presented itself and it was fun. When everything stops being fun, I'll go onto something else.
I like travelling and if I have to come to Hollywood to make a movie I will, but otherwise I'd never move there. It's very much an industry town and that doesn't really interest me.
Look at every action movie in Hollywood. Every leading man from Spider-Man to Batman to James Bond, 'Bourne Identity', every one of them possesses martial arts skills.
If the movie had ended in Hollywood fashion, the Copenhagen climate conference in 2009 would have marked the culmination of the global fight to slow a changing climate.
When I was a kid, I loved Elvis, and Harrison Ford as Indiana Jones. But I had no connection to Hollywood - and being a movie star was such a far-fetched idea, growing up in Hawaii.
Growing up in Hollywood, like I did, I have a passion and a love for the movies, so I go to the cinema all the time.
What counts in Hollywood is box office. It doesn't really matter what people think of you as an actor because, as long as you have been in a movie that has made money, you will always get another job.
No matter how successful you get in Hollywood, you cannot rest. Your new movie doesn't open well; they're looking for the next person to replace you; it's always something. You never have true peace.
If we based everything in Hollywood on who was a nice guy, holy moly, we would have no movies. No actors would work. This is not an industry that is ruled by kindness and generosity.
The go-to reflex all over Hollywood is still likeability. I've always had a problem with it because I think I have a weird barometer in the sense that some of the characters I've cared about the most in movies are characters that are often thought of...
Because I was a kid from north of England, the only films I had access to was not alternative cinema, which in those days would be foreign cinema; I would be looking at all the Hollywood movies that arrived at my High Street.
Unfortunately, many talented people in Hollywood find their values and politics do not reflect the content they create, and many movie themes are in direct contrast with over half of today's American families.
Corporate Hollywood thinks I'm a geek to go back and do theater. They don't understand why I don't want to be a movie star, why I'm not pursuing Mel Gibson's roles.
There are definitely roles within this industry that are industry-related, but to be a good actor, you really have to want to act first. At the same time, my goal was never to go to Hollywood to make movies. I think if you come here with that attitud...
As much as we'd like to believe that our work is great and that we're infallible, we're not. Hollywood movies are made for the audience. These are not small European art films we're making.
Every time you get the chance to work with somebody you admire and would like to collaborate with... it feels like the best opportunity that's ever come your way, whether that's in fringe theatre or a really big-budget Hollywood movie.
I used to think as I looked out on the Hollywood night — there must be thousands of girls sitting alone like me, dreaming of becoming a movie star. But I'm not going to worry about them. I'm dreaming the hardest.
