I feel like I've cheated. I never knew what to do. I was never a good enough painter to earn a living, and so I drifted into the theatre, and I've had a successful life. I feel guilty that I've never done a day's work in my life!
After high school, I worked as a messenger boy at a local bank. I was miserable. I felt like Robin Hood chained in the Sheriff of Nottingham's dungeon. As a would-be writer, I thought it was a catastrophe. As a bank employee, I could barely add or subtract and had to count on my fingers.
I've said for years I could never figure out why Calgary ever drafted me. When I got there, I think they had eight or nine right wingers already. These guys were premiere players. It's not like they were extremely late in their careers, either.
I was about to get a degree in economics when I accepted that I'd be a lousy businessman, and if I didn't give acting a try I'd regret it for the rest of my life.
My dad works in finance, so he kept giving me the stats: only one in a hundred actors makes it. He'd ask, 'Have you thought about producing?'
I started to think maybe I could become an actor, but I didn't have the confidence.
I got out of university and there was a general panic throughout my family as to what I was going to do. For about six months, I did this job in recruitment and I was just so awful at it. I jumped before I was pushed.
I think it was in my second week that I auditioned for Battlestar. I was very "Oh gosh, I want to be in television, I want to be in something, but I don't know if I want to be in this."
After Brown, I went to Duke, to a Ph.D. program in American literature. My dad's an English professor. After a year there, I was like, 'Jesus. I don't want to do this. I don't want to be in the library.' So I pulled the ripcord, and that was it.
I really thought I wanted to be a lawyer, but then I had an epiphany when I was in law school and dropped out. I'd always been a journalism junkie, but I'd never had confidence to think that I could actually edit or write the stories.
When I first came into acting, I had great opportunities to make a decent movie. I had a run there in 2005, '06, '07 - for a long time it was "Oh, he's the best thing in the movie that's not that good." I started questioning: Did I make the right choice? Should I have stayed in wrestling a bit longer? And then budgets became lower and lower and the pay kinda stayed the same and there wasn't a lot of growth.
I went to Brown University, but my mom said I couldn't be an artist because I would starve.
I think everybody has a moment in their career where you have to test whether it was right or wrong. We've all been there. I've looked back at performances of my own, where only you know if it is something you want to repeat. As long as you know when it's not right that you don't repeat it all the time.
There was a period when I'd just come out of college where I'd been playing classical guitar and I suddenly realised that it wasn't what I wanted to do with the rest of my life.
Really I feel less keen about the Army every day. I think the Church would suit me better.
I often thought I was in the wrong business. I was pretty seriously thinking of tossing it in before I shot Shine. I do not know why. I was pretty restless, I had been through a bad period of stress induced anxiety - panic attacks - and I was not sure of what I wanted to do.
When a film doesn't do well, people start doubting you as an actor.
I don't love being an actor, but I'm not qualified to be anything else. I was an auto mechanic and drove a tow truck and tried to go to school to be a paramedic.
The Derby experience had not been good for me and the way it finished left a very bad taste in my mouth so I questioned whether I wanted to go back into management.
After playing with Rob Zombie, I was ready to go, 'OK, this is as far as I'm taking this bass-playing thing. This is the end of the road.' I was ready to kind of hang it up.
I really honestly can't see myself as a lawyer. It's pretty much safe to say I'll never become one.
I don't really know if I want to do acting as a career. I really don't know what I want to do yet.
Suddenly people were saying I was cocky because I'd done a Steven Spielberg movie and thought I was better than everyone else, which surprised me at first. I suddenly started feeling like a freak because everyone was treating me differently. It was confusing, and I did wonder if acting was for me anymore.
I was supposedly living this glamorous life, but I was crippled by the idea of growing old and where do I go next? The whole age thing—in our industry, it's everything.
Every time I sat in a chemistry lesson, I thought, 'What am I doing this for? I don't ever want to be in a job that involves a Bunsen burner.'
