Joel Edgerton Quotations

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

Every now and then, I have a deep thought.

To me, 'Warrior' was a real turning point - probably one of the greatest experiences I've ever had as an actor on set.

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.

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

I had a brother who was bullying me to write something because we wanted to make our own movies. So it was out of necessity in the beginning. Over time, I began to see that I could create the roles I wanted to play rather than just waiting around.

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

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'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.

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

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'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.

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.

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.

What makes a really great fighter is a combination of ingredients: one is everything physical that you can do, and the other is what's mentally there for you. And I think that comes down to how big your heart is and what's driving you.

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

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.

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'.'

So many people wait around for funding, and if they're unsuccessful, they don't make the film; if you've got a good idea, that seems so pointless. There's always a way of doing it; you've just got to find it.

One wrong move, and you destroy your career.

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.

I wasted too much time in my twenties. I worked, but I would do theater in the evening, and during the day I would surf and do irascible things. And then, for some reason, as I got closer to my thirties, I thought, 'Okay Joel, you've wasted enough time.'

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

I don't have any kids of my own.

I don't call acting a real job, and writing is a hobby.

I don't appreciate, really, talking to journalists when there's a sense of wanting to kick up dust to sell more papers or get more hits on their Internet site.

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 always wonder why people cast me in 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.

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.

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

I find it strange when people can't relate to kids, because you were a kid once, you know?

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

I think the life of an actor is glamorous to other people, but then the reality sets in: you don't know where you will be next year or how long you'll be there for.

I think the great thing about religion is it's there to teach us the good path and that we're all equal, that we should be treated as such.

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.

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

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.

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

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

Part of the privilege of being an actor is the people you get to work with.

Part of me wonders what it would have been like to have had my first experience of India in a normal way, rather than through the eyes of a film.

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

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

Some people are really good at playing the movie star - they are really good at cultivating that mystique - but I'm not really into that.

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

I tend to take on a lot of things. And then they all just seem to happen at once. Or maybe I'm not good at saying 'No'. But the juggling's fun.

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 think I'd be too scared to direct my first movie and put myself in the center.

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

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

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

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

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.

To me, Hollywood seems a little bipolar. Things happen; things don't happen. Someone's in a movie; someone's not in a movie. I've learned not to build my expectations.

What an audience decides about where certain characters come from is really up to them.

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.

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.

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.

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

Cultures render their icons in their own image. Which comes down to vanity, in some sense.

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.

I spent a lot of time outdoors as a kid.

I've signed four autographs for Sam Worthington in L.A., and I haven't told any of the people that I'm not him.

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.

Sometimes I just wonder if I'm being led by variety. If one film leads me down one path, sometimes I just want to turn around and head the opposite way for the next project. I hope that's not the case, but sometimes I suspect that.

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.

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

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.

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.

Stunt work offers a diversity of roles and, while I'm used to anonymity, I really like showing off and performing in front of camera, though I know my limitations.

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.

'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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.'

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!'

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

It's easier to play aggression and malevolence onscreen, often, than to hit softer notes.

It's an incredibly liberating feeling to have a skirt on. In fact, I know you can buy skirts, and you can buy work kilts and all sorts of stuff.