"I'm glad this success is happening to me now, when I'm more prepared for it. I'm more realistic about how tenuous it is, the fact that everything can disappear tomorrow".
***
"Oh, God, no, I wouldn't like that level of fame and success, because I didn't become an actor for those reasons. I became an actor because I like performing, playing interesting characters and telling fabulous stories. Fame and fortune are a very strange by-products of it. They don't motivate me at all".
***
"I subscribe to the Alec Guinness school of acting there. He was a man who could easily walk down the street without being recognised and who took great delight in appearing on the stage each evening and then slipping out the stage door and nobody knowing who he was. And I used to love that. I used to love doing plays for various theatre companies around the place and, after the play, just having a little bit of a drink at the bar and slipping off and nobody knowing".
***
"I never wanted to become a public figure. All I wanted to do was become an actor, work in theatre, come out and have a beer and be anonymous".
***
"I'm just an actor who's been in some very successful movies. The concept of a star is something I have a hard time defining".
***
"What I've achieved so far, you know, is beyond my wildest dreams. My biggest ambition when I was younger was to appear on stage at what was then Nimrod, which is the theatre where my father used to take me on Sunday afternoons to see matinees. The most extraordinary things used to occur on that stage. It was like - it was a magical world. That was the height of my ambition, to be able to one day become an actor and appear on that stage, and I achieved that. To me, everything that's come since has been a fabulous bonus".
***
"I enjoy the fact there is no public recognition around me. I never took acting up for that reason. Fame just doesn't interest me at all, but if I thought about it, I'd get a touch scared by it".
***
"I'm pretty easygoing. There's a lot of craziness that comes attached to a job that involves you being in the public eye, but I'm lucky that the level of recognition I have in Australia is rarely intrusive. I lead a pretty simple life and I love it like that".
***
"I live a very modest life in a simple apartment. I have no desire to own more than one place of abode, I don't need a holiday house, I don't need a boat. I have one car, I don't need two. In fact, I don't really need much at all. My greatest extravagance is eating out, which I do all the time and if I can continue doing that, I'll be a very happy person".
♦
about his status of "the thinking woman's sex symbol":
"It's not how I see myself, and I don't think anybody who gets that label thrown their way, in all seriousness, could take it. Well, maybe some people do".
***
"I honestly don't see myself as a sex symbol at all. I see myself as an actor who's been extremely fortunate. I can see that the character of Diver Dan was a very attractive character, but God, no, I don't see myself as a sex symbol".
***
"It was strange, actually. To me, that came from left field because I certainly didn't see myself in that guise. Yeah, it was a strange one".
***
"That tag came after I was in a short-lived TV series and my character caught the national attention. Do I wake up in the morning and look in the mirror admiringly? Absolutely, I say, tongue in cheek".
***
"That something I spend absolutely zero time thinking about. Oh, I'd say I'm average".
***
"It's laughable. Anyone who knows me would say the same. I'm not that sex-symbol guy. It's a giggle, nothing more. If you take any of that stuff too seriously, you're in grave danger of losing the plot big time."
♦
about his mystique:
"I'll always do what's necessary promoting the work I'm involved in, because otherwise how would people know that I have films at the theatre or pieces on TV? But other than that, I don't see the necessity to reveal my day-to-day life, because it's my day-to-day life. Possibly it's (because of) that, that I'm "mysterious" ".
♦
about his fan bas:
"I'd say mid-fifties to eighties is my fan base".
***
"I think my fan base, I think, is like, well, at the moment it's like ten-year-old boys, from Lord of the Rings, and older women".
***
"People recognise me but very rarely approach me. Even at the height of SeaChange, the fan mail I got tended to come from young kids and old ladies. Because I'm not dying for publicity or desperate to be a `star', maybe I hold back something."
♦
about his relations with the photographers and paparazzi:
"I never mind being in front of a camera with a moving piece of film behind it, be-cause I'm in control and I know what I'm doing. But with a photograph, no, I can sometimes feel rather awkward".
***
"I'm resigned to it. I realise it has happened and will continue to happen. But it's something I try not to let affect me any more".
♦
about his shyness:
"I can be very shy. Throw me in a group of people I don't know and I'm the person quivering in the corner or wanting to. I really wish I could approach people but I have a constant fear that I'll have nothing to say, that I'm not interesting enough. It's one of my character flaws".
***
"Acting is about assuming another character, which I feel far more comfortable doing than playing the role of myself in front of a television camera".
***
"If I don't know the people I'm with, I'm an extremely shy person. But once I am comfortable with a group, I can turn the knob up to 11".
♦
about his relations with Hollywood:
"I don't have an axe to grind against Hollywood. It is valid. Where I live in Sydney we have the biggest sound studio outside of Hollywood and that is good. It gives a lot of work. But there is always concern about Hollywood's dominance of world entertainment. The danger is that our industry in Australia doesn't become homogenized and that we still make our own films and tell our own stories with our own voices. There is room for all of that".
***
"There's been opportunities there. The door's certainly - it's probably closing a little bit now, but it's certainly been open. In terms of being offered roles on a plate - no, that hasn't happened, but there have been opportunities that I could have pursued that for a number of reasons I haven't. That's not to say that I won't in the future. Hollywood's a big place and they make all sorts of different movies. Some movies I'm attracted to; a lot of the movies I'm not. But there are some terrifically talented people over there that I'd love to work with".
***
"In that particular case, it was. It was to do a play, and that was three years ago in Melbourne. I'd agreed to do a play in Melbourne which was a stage production of Sam Sheppard's play True West and I was in the subscription season and then an offer did come my way from overseas, and no, I couldn't - I couldn't turn down what I'd agreed to do to go to America. They thought that I was absolutely foolish. They couldn't understand that decision whatsoever".
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