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One of the things that I found very confronting in my early working life was that people thought I was some sensitive doe-eyed lovelorn boy, because they'd seen me do that a couple of times. What tends to happen is you get a run of similar roles.
Ben Mendelsohn -
For mine, the villains of the piece were always important. In a traditional sense, that's always an important role.
Ben Mendelsohn
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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.
Ben Mendelsohn -
I came from the outer suburbs of Melbourne, so you do learn how to survive in that environment.
Ben Mendelsohn -
The people that impress me are Bob Dylan. The ones who keep working, year in and year out, and keep coming up with stuff.
Ben Mendelsohn -
I think now there's much more of a confessional culture. That's not my bag. I come from a slightly older school of thought: 'give 'em nothin.' You don't plead guilty.
Ben Mendelsohn -
It's got a lot more room for nuance and an assumption that people have started from the beginning. 'Bloodline' ends up being like a really good novel.
Ben Mendelsohn -
At any period of an actor's life, it's fairly likely that they'll be cast in ways that are reminiscent. That's the way it goes.
Ben Mendelsohn
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'Slow West' is a western, and it's sort of a twist on the genre stylistically, I think, from what I understand going in.
Ben Mendelsohn -
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.
Ben Mendelsohn -
I don't know that it exists, the perfect family. It's always complicated.
Ben Mendelsohn -
I generally feel like people that are doing the wardrobe know more about wardrobe than I do, and they have an overview.
Ben Mendelsohn -
If you're a 'character actor,' you get hired to play baddies a lot.
Ben Mendelsohn -
$3,000 from a residual cheque was all I made one year.
Ben Mendelsohn
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I think Kyle Chandler is something of a national treasure.
Ben Mendelsohn -
Acting is a bit of a heart and soul exercise with me. It's kind of all I've got.
Ben Mendelsohn -
I think it's that thing of growing up all the time watching American movies and listening to American music. It hits you in a way that's a lot purer because you are not in that culture that you're watching.
Ben Mendelsohn -
At 15 I had moved out of my parents' place, and my options were looking pretty narrow. But I had this acting thing and I just wanted to be able to keep going because it was really good. That was all I wanted.
Ben Mendelsohn -
I think there's a lot of mythos about what's required in acting.
Ben Mendelsohn -
I don't believe in the transformation myth, where if you have more success, life changes for you.
Ben Mendelsohn
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In a very real sense, all you do when you're shooting film or television is you shoot a scene, and then you shoot another scene, and then you shoot another scene.
Ben Mendelsohn -
The very rough story is this: Melbourne boy, out of both my parents' houses at a young age, lived with my grandmother, drama teacher twisted me into doing this TV thing that I thought my mates were doing, too.
Ben Mendelsohn -
My general feeling about approach to work is that anyone that's there, they're all there to do the best job they can.
Ben Mendelsohn -
I was with my grandmother, while one of my brothers lived with my dad, and one lived with my mom. It wasn't a great situation. Acting was the one good thing I was involved in.
Ben Mendelsohn