Safety and comfort comes with complacency, and that's never a good place to be working from.
Elijah Wood
I think being different, going against the grain of society is the greatest thing in the world.
There's a real purity in New Zealand that doesn't exist in the states. It's actually not an easy thing to find in our world anymore. It's a unique place because it is so far away from the rest of the world. There is a sense of isolation and also being protected.
In the absence of love, there is nothing worth fighting for.
Dream the impossible because dreams do come true.
If you cut off your arm instead of going 'spurt, spurt, spurt' wouldn't it, like, go nuts? Or would it go with the beat of your heart?
I love the smell right after a storm.
I had a woman breakdown and cry when she met me which was difficult to deal with because immediately when someone starts to cry, you want to comfort them, you know, 'Poor thing.' I comforted her. I tried to make her feel better.
Putting a needle on a record is almost like you're making a commitment to listening to something.
I definitely don't look my age. So I actively look for roles that will help people change their perception of me.
There are a lot of vipers in this industry, people who only have their own interests in mind.
What's so strong about 'Game of Thrones' is that it's a character and political drama, with a sort of fantasy backdrop.
I think 'The Lord of the Rings' holds perhaps a deeper place in people's hearts than 'The Hobbit' the book does.
So much time is wasted on trying to be better than others.
I was lucky in the sense that I started work very young but had a solid family base provided by my mother. She instilled a strong sense of perspective and humility in me from a very early age.
I feel like I'm constantly learning. Constantly trying to grow.
This bizarre industry presents so many paths of temptation. If you don't have some kind of foundation, typically from family, then it will be difficult to deal with.
After 'Rings,' I had two feelings: One, I immediately didn't want to work on anything on a large scale. I wanted to work on something really small after I was finished filming the first three. But the other thing was that I had a continuing interest in working on things that were really different.
The worst kind of lying I've ever done is keeping things from people.
I remember the first horror movie I saw - I was five years old; it was a direct-to-video movie called 'Truth or Dare: a Critical Madness,' which is sort of badly fantastic or fantastically bad. And then 'Gremlins' was an early movie that I saw, and 'Nightmare on Elm Street 3.'
I don't fear death or ageing, but I fear them in other people that I am close to.
If you can get your movie made the way you want to get it made, no matter what the end result is going to be, if people are going to see it, that's awesome.
I've always looked for roles that are different. I've tried to continue to challenge myself as an actor and work in varying styles of films.
When I was in my 20s, I started frequenting record stores, and there was one in particular called Tropicalia in Furs in New York City. It's closed now, but it was one of those magical places where you would walk in, and the owner would start playing you records and not let you leave. It was such an education.
If you're innocent, you have very little knowledge of the world, and you want to succeed. People with parasitic interests will see you as their prey.
My bucket list tends to relate to travel or eating.
I just want to work on things that move me.
It would be an amazing superpower to be able to make every person you meet feel better about the thing that makes them insecure.
I grew up actually reading 'The Hobbit,' not 'The Lord of the Rings.' I loved 'The Hobbit' growing up.
The approach of 'Game of Thrones' is similar to 'The Lord of the Rings' in that it treats its source material almost like history, and it focuses as much on the human drama as it does on anything fantastical.
I'm kind of insane when it comes to music, a little obsessed.
I have always kept a pretty healthy separation between my work in my film and my life outside of it.
The older I've gotten, the more I've gotten a little precious about music-related films as it comes to biopics. I kind of don't want to see it; I'd rather see a documentary. And this is just coming from me. I love music documentaries; I kind of don't want to see people embodying those people.
As much as my primary vocation is that of an actor, if anything, I feel like I am more excited about filmmaking in general, so it's not always a specific role that I'm attracted to, but rather an entire piece that I want to be a part of.
Many of my friends are not in the film industry, and I feel like it's healthy. It's not totally by choice. It is, perhaps, people I connect with.
