Snakes are sometimes perceived as evil, but they are also perceived as medicine. If you look at an ambulance, there's the two snakes on the side of the ambulance. The caduceus, or the staff of Hermes, there's the two snakes going up it, which means that the venom can also be healing.
I have eclectic tastes in the movies I want to do.
I'm always going to judge somebody on their work ethic, and whether or not they made me feel something, or whether or not I felt they did a good job. To me, it's important to try to block anything personal out and look at the performance, in any field.
I know what it's like to meet someone you admire and have them be a complete jerk.
I think on some level, all of us have a little bit of belief in the possibility of different energies and forces and things like that. Otherwise, we wouldn't be afraid of them. Or there wouldn't be so many movies about them.
You can choose your family sometimes. You can choose people, it could be a teacher, it could be a professor, it could be someone you work with that actually genuinely cares about you and wants you to succeed.
Tattoos to me are the outward symbol of the inward change within my soul.
I do enjoy animated movies.
I hit the ground running, without a lot of training, so I had to do whatever I could do to survive as a professional, and if that meant being that character 24/7 and acting out, I was going to do that. I lived those characters, I brought them home with me.
I believe that there's a way to question authority with manners, with dignity. There's no reason to be rude about it.
Well, Amber [Heard] is still raising her eyebrow at me because I said that I've been 180 miles per hour on the 405 freeway on a motorcycle and she doesn't believe me but it's a true story. I did it coming home from work at 3 in the morning on another movie I made about cars called Gone in 60 Seconds. I bought a Yamaha-1 and I was doing 180 miles per hour home on the 405 and that's really, really crazy but I did it.
I needed to change my name just to liberate myself and find out I could do it without walking into a Hollywood casting office with the name Coppola.
I haven't made anything I don't believe in. I've always started a movie with a song in my heart, and even when I'm a little unclear about it, something magical happens and it comes into focus in a way that I'm feeling good about.
I try not to be proud. I try to actively attack pride.
I've always maintained that I see myself as a student. There's always something to learn and be challenged by and hopefully grow from.
I never studied dance, but if you look at 'Wild At Heart,' my mother saw that movie and said, 'You are a dancer. Look at how you're moving: all that strange energy is like modern dance.'
It's a family that's loaded with grudges and passion. We come from a long line of robbers and highwaymen in Italy, you know. Killers, even.
When I was eight, I would look at the cover of the 'Ghost Rider' comic book in my little home in Long Beach, California, and I couldn't get my head around how something that scary could also be good. To me it was my first philosophical awakening - 'How is this possible, this duality?'
The best characters are the ones that somehow manage to be both attractive and repulsive at the same time. If you do that, you're at the center of the universe - if you can find characters who are more ambiguous and can raise more questions than answers.
All of my characters have a glint of madness.
Zoology has always been interesting to me. Nature is fascinating.
I always see America as really belonging to the Native Americans. Even though I'm American, I still feel like a visitor in my own country.
As I got older, with my work, I became aware of the responsibility of film, and I feel one of the best ways I can apply myself as an actor, is to go beyond movie stardom and celebrity.
My best takes are my first two takes.
I'm at the point now where I know I'm doing something right when a movie gets mixed reviews, because then I'm not in the box. I don't want to make it too easy for people and I don't want to make it too easy for myself. I want to try something unusual.
