In a weird way, I live vicariously through the characters I play as an actor.
The older I get, the more vegetables I eat. I can't stress that more. Eating healthy really affects my work. You not only need to be physically prepared, but mentally and spiritually.
I want to show up to work and take risks. I don't ever want to play it safe.
I'm a pretty private person, so I'd like to say I'm a good ear and that I keep my mouth shut.
I always like playing the bad guys. They have more fun! I want a director to come up to me and say, "You can't get too weird!" That's a good thing. I loved hearing that. Let me play. I like to play around.
As we were negotiating, I didn't have a script. Once the deal is closed, they let you read the script. So, I got the script and was reading it like, "Oh, please be good!," because I'd already signed on the dotted line. And I read it and just went, "Okay, I'm going to be okay. Thank god!" It was a really funny, moving story.
Marvel is very secretive, so there was no script. About six months before production, they gave me some pages and it was from a cop movie. And then, six months later, I got a phone call saying, "Do you want to come do this?" [iron Man]
I can't go to the hardware store, cut a sheet in half and staple it to the window anymore. It doesn't fly.
I grew up in a crazy, gypsy-like household of actors, dancers and loony Broadway people. It was their way of life, and I didn't know anything else.
I've been trying to figure out what moment The Lone Ranger came into our lives. We've always just known about The Lone Ranger. It's common knowledge. I don't ever remember watching the television show.
The hats are tough. I've got a weird head, so believe me, there were a lot of hats. Penny [Rose], our costume designer, who I knew from other jobs said, "Badge, that looks terrible on you. Hold on. No, we can't do that one."
You spend all this time, as a child, coming up with these fantasy stories, and here I am, sleeping in a treehouse, in the middle of Canyon de Chelly, shooting a Western. That's a bit of a once-in-a-lifetime experience.
I found a treehouse. I found this weird tree, out in a field, and someone had put a piece of a fence, way up in a tree. I just went up there and went to sleep for a few hours, in full cowboy regalia. And someone did take a photo. I have a photo of it, somewhere. It brought me back to when I was 12 years old, sitting in a treehouse and imagining that I was in a Western somewhere.
Speaking of childhood fantasy, we were doing a Western, but we were also just hanging out. You work, and you ride and ride and ride, and then, for the next two hours, you look for a place to kick out, in this amazing canyon with so much heritage and so much history.
