Ben Mendelsohn Quotes
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I've spent various periods of my career being thought of as various things, various degrees of substance and ideas.
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It's a tougher gig than what people think it is. The proper, real, genuine, worldwide movie stars don't get a lot of downtime from the world outside. That's a tougher price, I think, than what people's fantasy of fame account for.
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I did 'Quigley Down Under,' which is quite deliberately placed in Australia, which is a Tom Selleck, Alan Rickman, Laura San Giacomo film from '88, I want to say.
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You think of 'Outlaw Josey Wales,' you immediately think of the old Indian guy, Sondra Locke, the old lady with the glasses, beautiful old actress.
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'Animal Kingdom' was an amalgam of two people that I had met-slash-known, not particularly well. They were both very, very scary people for very different reasons.
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The way that actors talk about acting is generally quite punishing, and I think actors want to put forward the idea that they do all of this work because, you know, it's a post-De Niro world, when, largely, in fact, it's almost never true.
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I came from the outer suburbs of Melbourne, so you do learn how to survive in that environment.
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In Australia, even the darkest subject matter has a little pinch of humor. A little sweet to make the sour go down.
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I suspect, for a lot of people who become actors, there's a feeling of wanting to be someone other than who they actually are.
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Typically, I'll wake up at 4:30 in the morning. It's just the continual jet lag residue, just weird sleeping hours.
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The first 'Star Wars' film was enormously important. I grew up right smack-bang in the sweet spot of all of those. It's true cinema magic. It's fair to say that, as a kid, I would have been very happy to be Han Solo, and I would have been happy to have gone out with Princess Leia.
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I don't have memorabilia but try to take a bit of wardrobe, usually because they dress me better than I dress myself.
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I remember 'The Yearling' was the first film I ever saw, and my mom told me I cried for about four or five days afterwards. I'd be going along during the day and suddenly start crying over what had happened to the little deer.
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I got a good-enough adolescence. I mean, there's a sense wherein you skip a part of childhood, too, when you start working at that age I did; I was out working and out of home at 15, paying my own way in the world.
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Fifteen years old, out in the world, acting was all I had.
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The thing about home is that it's a tough place to sustain a career, just by dent of the size of the place. I had about as good a run there as anybody, but it's still a tough ask. I mean, the person I think with the best career in Australia is Ray Meagher, in 'Home and Away.'
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'Animal Kingdom' is a significant comet, and it's cast a tail. It's very hard to see anything post that happening without that.
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You feel an affinity with younger actors, because, you know, it's a very insecure job. And it can be a long time before you feel like, you know, things might be all right.
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I'm very well known in the industry and relatively well known by people who are aficionados and what not, but outside of that - no.
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I wanted to keep working because work was essentially fantastic - you got to be around people, you got to be in a family, and that family changed from job to job. It was like being in the circus.
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I don't know that it exists, the perfect family. It's always complicated.
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I had a pretty good career at home. What keeps you going is not having a plan B. It's a very good thing. I think if I had a viable plan B, I might not have kept going.
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If you're a 'character actor,' you get hired to play baddies a lot.
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Most young actors, that's all they're trying to do: Get better at acting and be able to keep doing it. And that doesn't work out for most people.