Joel Edgerton quotes:

Even to this day, when I think about the fact that I'm in this 'Star Wars' world, that I'm a half-brother to Darth Vader and an uncle to Luke Skywalker, it's too hard to wrap my head around.

I'm single, footloose and fancy free, I have no responsibilities, no anchors. Work, friendship and self-improvement, that's me.

There's the pressure of being a No. 1 on the call sheet, being a lead actor. There's almost this feeling like being captain of the team. You want to put a bit of energy into actually setting a good example.

I often put any project I write in a different decade just to roll the thought around in my head. There's a thriller I've written that I think would be nice to set in the '70s or '80s, just to take cell phones away from the movie. There's nothing like the piercing ring of an old-school telephone to really scare an audience.

When I was young, I had a very clear point of view on things in life, on moral questions. There was a black and white viewpoint on my world. As I've gotten older, I see the grey areas appear.

Blue Tongue Films is a very important part of my life.

Animal Kingdom' feels like a suburban Melbourne version of 'The Godfather 'to me. It's epic and Shakespearean in its story, and yet you still feel like you can reach out and touch it.

Everything is a learning process: any time you fall over, it's just teaching you to stand up the next time.

All I can say is working with Ridley Scott is a dream come true.

Pittsburgh felt like the perfect size of a city to me. There's enough to do, but it's not like living in a circus. I also really loved how sports-enthusiastic Pittsburgh people are: how proud of their sports they are.

Whenever you're trying to do your own take on a classic piece of literature, it's almost like you're trying to swim up your own stream or drive down your own path.

Whereas 'Avatar' and other movies get shocks out of their three-dimensionality, 'Gatsby' is going to be about inviting the audience into this larger-than-life drama, letting them almost be inside the room rather than looking at it through the window. I think it will really work.

In Australia, there aren't a lot of people committed to art, so these communities form that are dedicated to music, theater, cinema, but they're very small. So, they tend to move ahead on the power of collaboration, enthusiasm and creativity.

I love the idea of real-life experiences finding their way into fiction. I think that's really cool.

This is the world we live in, isn't it? Tons of spin-offs; people reboot things very quickly. I was amazed how quickly they made a Wolverine movie, then, 'Let's do another origins Wolverine movie.'

It's tricky. I've never been standing at the top of the tree with tons of money thrown at me. I've never really had a profile. So in a way I have this 'nothing to lose' attitude.

I did my holy communion, and it was amazing how quickly the stories of the Bible and God and Jesus got under my skin.

I've never seen a film get away completely unscathed like I have 'Animal Kingdom.' There's not a single bad review that I've read of it yet; all through Sundance, all it got was high praise.

I was raised Catholic, and I remember in all the pamphlets and pictures we'd look at, Jesus was basically blonde with blue eyes. He kind of looked like Jared Leto.

I worked for a big department store, and strangely, on my first day, they put me in charge of Christmas wrapping. I didn't know how to wrap a present and make it not look like it fell off a truck.

I have this theory that alpha males are actually not alpha males. They're actually very scared - particularly scared of competition from a lot of men.

One of the great joys of being able to write something you can make, if you get certain actors you want and love, you're kind of buying yourself a front row seat to watch them work.

You can road-test relationships.

I don't want at the end of my life to look back at just a bunch of fictional movies I was involved in that kept taking me away from the real world.

My brother and I are best friends.

I learned so much by being an actor, and part of my sort-of development as a writer is big thanks to the scripts I read in my acting life.

Whenever you deal with science fiction you are setting up a world of rules. I think you work hard to establish the rules. And you also have to work even harder to maintain those rules, and within that find excitement and unpredictability and all that stuff.

I wanted to make a redemptive thriller that didn't end with some kind of big, crazy shootout and blood spill, but more of a collision of ideas and a discussion of ethics.

I was a good boy; I was never in trouble for anything.

I'm a great believer in not sitting around waiting for the right part to come around, but jumping in and building it for yourself.

It's funny how sometimes you learn things off the Internet before they're actually told to you.

There's never been a mathematical equation that says a good experience making a movie equates to a good movie, or a bad experience on a set is going to lead to a bad movie.

The Great Gatsby' ticked so many boxes for me.

My whole journey and career has been really interesting, but the one element it never really had was any sense of great momentum.

Every job leaves its residue, a bit of extra knowledge, a new skill-set.

People love boxing, but you've gotta wait two or three years for your favorite boxer to have a fight.

I have an issue with the commercial aspect of moviemaking: I don't see why a movie can't make a lot of money and also be good.

Australians and the British are very similar: If you try and stand out in any way, and you try to reach for success, someone is gonna be there to cut you down.

The tricky thing becomes: Do you know yourself well enough to then portray that on screen? And for me, I find that really hard. I'd rather hide behind accents and funny walks.

We are people in circumstances who make choices that we think are right at the time.

Particularly when you're making a movie of a book, people are always waiting with their knives - you know?

If I'm going to work for twelve hours a day, I want twelve hours of awesomeness!

I remember being bullied at school, and I remember being cruel to other kids.

I think it's great to be able to go and watch a short film before you watch a feature.

Sometimes Hollywood manages to knock a movie in its teeth so hard that it never manages to get back up.

I'm hardly digging trenches for a living. I'm getting to tap into my boyhood fantasies of being a larger-than-life character.

When you're constantly involved in domination, what you're really looking for is constant highs.

The downside to making movies at a gallop like we did with 'Wish You Were Here' is that we're shooting four or five scenes in a day, and it's very exhilarating, but you worry at the end of the day that you missed some details because you were moving too quick, and you just gotta trust and be ready straightaway.

To me, I think I'm just going to keep focused and forward on what I'm doing, work-wise, rather than searching for any kind of meaning in it.

Some of us are better at owning the responsibility of our actions than others.

I think the great thing about characters is the ways that they can be surprising. I mean, sometimes you think you've got a lock on a personality, even just in life, and then they'll shock you by their behavior.

A lot of the fighters will say you'll know if a fighter's won or lost just by a fighter's eyes - whether they're scared of the other person.

I think the life of an actor is very glamorous to other people - then, realities set in.

There's a real sense of fighting and destruction in our DNA that we don't get in touch with.

There's definitely a fascination with crime stories and stories of characters acting out against authority.

To act with a tennis ball and imagine it's a tentacle, or if you're in some kind of wilderness film and you go, 'Okay, we can't have a grizzly bear here, but imagine when you step over the rock there there's a grizzly bear.' I don't know. They're tough moments.

If I knew my schedule a month ahead, I'd be so bored.

Every now and then, I have a deep thought.

You've got to be really careful that you're not falling into the Hollywood trap, you know?

As an actor, I'm constantly striving to find the darkness in the lighter characters and the lightness in the darker characters.

I'm not scared of doing movies that are just about entertainment. I'm not scared of doing movies that are really challenging and cover difficult terrain. I just want good experiences and I want to challenge myself and I want to just keep learning, as an actor.

The last TV show I binged on was 'Hannibal' because it stars two of my friends, Mads Mikkelsen and Hugh Dancy, who I first met filming 'King Arthur' back in 2003, and I just lapped this show up; loved it.

It's weird: I don't see myself as a tough guy.

'The Great Gatsby' ticked so many boxes for me.

The sum total of all my stop-starts have made me less concerned about the future. I'm just aware now that I'll always land on my feet somehow.

Sometimes, the smaller roles in movies can be the most interesting. If you only take the stance that you'll only play central characters in movies, you'll find yourself not being able to indulge in that morally grey terrain that makes support characters so rich and interesting.

I have always stuck to my guns about what I want from the work and what interests me. I've never been seduced down the evil path. The path of taking the money.

I'm not going to allow myself to second-guess projects. I'm just going to do the ones that I fully love and believe in - that's a real privilege.

There's a certain relief to just being the guy who puts on the costume and walks onset and gets to prance or stomp around in a Ridley Scott or Baz Luhrmann movie.

Getting the call from Ridley Scott made me think that sometimes you just need to go to work.

Sometimes, what's not said is just as important to the writing as what is said. As a writer, we have our voices heard. I think that, at oftentimes, the ability to allow the dialogue to recede properly into the world of the film is also a really valid sort of way to be a writer, I think.

One of the things I've always enjoyed is moving around and staying fit. Physicality is such a big part of being an actor, but it's also about stillness and silence.

I'm a pacifist.

I came out of high school, where my heroes were, like, Michael Jordan and a lot of local rugby players - and on the movie front, it was Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone.

I always kind of aim with the action stuff to make it feel like, as an audience member, you're experiencing what the people are experiencing. As soon as you go into slow-mo or repeated edits, shooting it like it's a stunt, it takes it out of that reality. The more real you make that stuff, the more tense it will be.

I think, often with Australian films, if an Australian film has been given the seal of approval by an offshore festival or an offshore release, then it does mean a lot to a local audience.

I learned a great lesson early on, even before I was really an actor, from that movie 'Planes, Trains & Automobiles' that John Hughes made: that you could make a movie that's really, really, really, really funny, and sometimes you can still achieve... making the audience feel very deep emotions as well.

Everybody's a mix of good and bad choices that they make.

Where does guilt and punishment lie, and are we not more expressive over remorse or guilt when other people see the badness in us?

The first video I ever watched was on a Beta system because everyone thought Beta was the way but then it ended up being video so we backed the wrong horse.

The biggest difference for me is momentum. On a smaller film you get to shoot sometimes four or five scenes a day and you've got to do the tight schedule. I think I really feel the luxuries of a big budget film.

People talk about the difference between working on stage and working on film. I think you could say that there are as many differences between working on low budget films and working on big budget films. You really are doing the same thing, but at the same time you're doing something vastly different as well.

I operate under the theory that all publicity is good publicity, and then, if that theory doesn't work, you just say that any newspaper article ends up on the bottom of the parrot cage. But, of course, you can't line a parrot cage with Internet bloggers, can you?

I would have happily done 'Bourne Legacy,' but a lot of decisions are made for you.

I couldn't do 'Eleanor Rigby' because it was clashing with another project - something I was going to go do - something with Liv Ullmann.

Having rain on your tuxedo is a pretty good reminder that you're not James Bond.

I love what I do, but it occurs to me I may have handed over a large portion of my life to fiction.

I oftentimes find with movies that the heavier the onscreen situation is, the more levity there is off screen. It's almost out of necessity.

Polo is like playing golf with a saddle, and there are a lot of moving parts.

The narrator of a documentary often comes in at the last minute and takes some of the glory they don't deserve.

I blame my work for a lot of things. I thank my work for a lot of things, too, but the trouble with being so passionately involved in work is that it becomes like a lover, like your partner, because it nourishes you.

I did have someone tell me that I looked like Conan O'Brien. I was like, 'What?'

I grew up being taught, 'Do unto others as they would do unto you.' I would get scolded for not being polite.

Unfortunately, the Egyptians weren't the greatest artists in the world.

Actors want to act; actors want to emote. It's like the emotional equivalent of tearing your shirt off and screaming to the heavens: you want to express, and you want to be seen to be expressing.

Actors are excused from a lot of things, and we get away with a lot... I find it equally interesting and exciting as it is disgusting and bizarre.

I'm not saying I'm a family guy, but maybe that's what people see in me: some kind of paternal quality.

Making a movie like 'Felony' is hard work because you're really putting your own ideas on the screen. You can't hide behind some other person's script; you're saying, 'This is my brain, and I want you to know what I think'.'

Sometimes I think being an actor is like being a dog for a director; it's like they throw a stick, and you want to fetch it and bring it back to them. You want a pat on the head for it.

Gene Hackman was a superstar in the '70s - with that face!

I'm on the list that I thought I'd never be on. I'm not sitting here thinking, 'God, I might get this part' or 'is it too late for me to play Hamlet?' It's really about: who do I get to work with? There's so many people on that list.

Fighting in the ring or cage is very much different from fighting in the street. Fighting in the street is very much fueled by anger, pride, and male dominance and ego.

You have to stick to what you love and purse that at all costs. Don't choose money first; it won't make you happy.

The nature of human beings is that we're competitive, and the chances are there's someone out there who's going to work harder than you and want it more than you.

If, at the end of the day, I can look back and see pictures of all the characters I've played, and there's a smorgasbord of weirdos and interesting, odd, different characters, I'd be so happy.

Really, no-one is bad except for serial killers and dictators.

I'm pretty skeptical about Hollywood and its fascination with the sequel and the franchise.

I never sing out loud because I'm afraid people will go, 'Shut up!'

The only way for you to show what you can do is to actually do.

It feels good to be fit and strong.

I thought I'd be married and a father by 35.

I really believe guilt finds its way out of a person.

I remember my brother Nash had just directed me in 'The Square,' and I was sitting in Australia going: 'No one's called me about working for ages. I don't know if I'm ever going to get another job.'

The Australians are actually the worst of the criminals from the United Kingdom, but not worst as in toughest. They're the ones who did stupid little things and got caught for it. Bad criminals.

There's a stage where you're desperate to get a job, and you're waving your hands in a sea of nothingness, going, 'Please, please, please! I'm over here - give me a job!'

One wrong move, and you destroy your career.

I always kept myself fairly fit.

Basically you want as many people as possible to see your movie.

North America makes a ton of movies and there's a ton of movies that are exceptional.

I'm really good at judging and observing other people, but not myself.