Stellan Skarsgard quotes:

I'm in Stockholm in my office. I just got here after seeing my eighth child on an ultrasound, so I'm in a good mood. It's beautiful: an energetic little skeleton.

One of the beauties of 'The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo' is the very delicate and strange relationship between the two main characters.

All directors are control freaks and very obsessive. I get the feeling that directors as kids, they all have had a childhood with not too much contact with other kids. They constructed their own reality and they continue to do it. It's a funny breed, directors.

Norway is a small country, about half the size of Sweden, but it has a very good film climate because they have municipal cinemas, so even in the smallest towns you have a cinema that shows art house films from all over the world.

It takes a long time to make me beautiful, but it goes fast to make me ugly.

Norwegian kids, they grow up well educated in film. So they have a lot of good directors there.

The way I look at humanity, I don't think there's good guys or bad guys. We're all potentially bad and potentially good.

People don't want to read subtitles.

I played a heap of snow in a school play. I was under a sheet, and crawled out when spring came. I often say I'll never reach the same artistic level again.

When you work with someone you don't quite know, you have to figure the director out and you can come up with ideas that are counter-productive.

Even the most despicable person is still a human being.

I treat everyone as equals. I can't work if I'm not having fun, and I can't have fun if not everyone is happy.

Casting a film, you can have the greatest actors in a film and it doesn't work. It's a combination of all of the elements.

I don't think that people in the world, in general, have too many chances.

Unfortunately, the way the world is constructed, a lot of people have no chance, from day one.

I never help my kids and I never encourage them and I never give them any advice.

It's really nice to go down to an extremely low-budget movie, but that is very daring and courageous and try something different, where the roles usually are more complicated.

There was a Russian director named Elem Klimov, who did his films during the communist days. They were constantly struggling with the authorities and to be allowed to express themselves. But he did one of the best war movies I've ever seen - it's called 'Come and See.'

I love having 30 shots of every scene.

Actors are different. Some actors play themselves very successfully, but I come from the theater. Having done Shakespeare, we sometimes did three or four characters in the same play.

Every culture has their myths that people are aware of and share.

I started acting long before I decided to pursue it. I started acting as an amateur when I was a kid, but I wanted to become a diplomat. It was self-centered and weird, but I had this idea of going out in the world and solving conflicts and making the world a better place.

if a real God were actually so vain as to constantly demand worship, then he would not be worth it.

I'm not always happy when Hollywood does remakes of films, but that's usually, when they have a very, very, very good film and they take away anything controversial from it and make flatter.

I'm not lazy on set. I'm lazy in the rest of my life.

I've done so many sex scenes in my life and it's much easier to do a funny sex scene than a sex scene that is supposed to look like it feels.

There is no overacting, only untrue acting.

There was a Russian director named Elem Klimov, who did his films during the communist days. They were constantly struggling with the authorities and to be allowed to express themselves. But he did one of the best war movies I've ever seen - it's called 'Come and See.

Theres nothing more reassuring than a world thats crazier than you are.

We don't live. We're miming in the choir.

You have to make sure that you find projects that are not too similar and roles that are not too similar, so the challenges are new and you still learn things. I still think I can become a much better actor.