“So many people can be sexy to me. Look, I know it’s a cliché but it doesn’t have to be a fantastic physique or a pretty face. It can be, you know, that someone has a wonderful laugh and a sometimes it can be the strangest thing that I can find sexy, people’s strange quirks. Certainly it’s not just a physical thing. It’s important, but that doesn’t mean the person has to have an incredible physique. Part of the body I find extremely sexy, hands I find extremely sexy. To me the ideal physique isn’t that wonderful one with curves and magnificent breasts and a gorgeous bottom or whatever. It doesn’t do an incredible amount for me”.
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what does he admire most about women?
“Their ability to read situations intuitively”.
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“I’d say women are a lot smarter than men. They know how to pull a relationship in the right direction. They have plans and think more long-term whereas men are more impulsive”.
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about his passion for football:
“Acting and football are very similar (the kicking, marking and handballing aspect aside). Both require an exhaustive rehearsal or training period leading to the per-formance or game day and both occur in a theatre of sorts. And if the director or coach is overly negative in critism it can become a selffulfilling prophesy. Even the most talented can then appear very ordinary in front of the crowd”.
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"I would love to have been an elite footballer but at school most of my footy mates were twice my size".
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about his passion for meal and travels:
“Oh yes, give me a couple of pieces of salmon or tune and I’m happy. I just love Japanese food. I love the taste of sushi and psychologically it feels so cleansing. You always think, this
must be doing me good”.
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“Travel is something I have always regarded as a priority. I see it as the greatest education you can have. You have the best time. I love exploring other cultures and their food. Food is very important to me”.
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about his preference in clothes:
“I'm a bit of a dressing-gown man around the house. It can be any time of the day - I just find it easy to put on”.
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about his passion for shopping:
“I’m very impulsive, too, which I can sometimes regret. I went into a shop to buy a tie and walked out with a Paul Smith suit, a shirt, a pair of shoes, cufflinks and a tie".
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about his relation to physical culture:
“I certainly exercised. But getting down on the ground and doing to push-ups be-fore the camera rolled? No. I'm a big fan of seeing people on the screen who look real. I'm not into the manufactured look”.
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“I don’t enjoy exercising so much, but I’ve realised that it’s beneficial”.
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“I now know you don’t need to go to the gym five days a week to get into shape. Even if I’ve just got five minutes, I can do something that will benefit me. You’ve just got to do it with intensity”.
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”If you go to the gym for two hours and spend in jogging on the running ma-chine, lifting a few weights, curling a few dumbbells, you’re not really doing anything. You`re wasting your time. There’s no intensity. Even when you’re traveling, all you need is 15 minutes in hotel room to do 100 push-ups, 100 squats and 100 sit-ups”
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“If I’m at the playground with Eliza Jane, one of the best uses of the bar of a swing is to do chin-ups with an overhand grip and then the other way for biceps or you can do box jumps on a park bench”.
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(about Mark Twight, his trainer on the shooting of "300") “He’s an amazing guy. He’s done so many things but he slips under the radar. He holds most of the world records in mountain climbing with no oxygen and he trains cage fighters in America. He trains people to the limit of their physical ability; right out there on the edge. When he first sent me an email detailing what we were going to do and I saw footage of what we were going to do, I nearly freaked. I thought this is stuff that gymnasts or professional athletes do. It was Olympic stuff. I thought he’d be the end of us, you know, one of those people that yelled and shouted at us the whole time. But he wasn’t. He’s quite a small guy. But when he takes off his shirt, I tell you what there is more muscles in that guy’s back than has ever been shown in an anatomy lesson. He’s unbelievable”.
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about his neatness:
“I'm a Virgo so I'm supposed to be quite meticulous, which I am in some areas, but in others I'm not”.
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about his housekeeping skills:
“I like cooking, but I like other people cooking more”.
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“A collapsible iron is an important item `cause you never know when you might have to throw on a suit. I can improvise anywhere, on the carpet, on a hotel desk, on the top of the television. I always use a towel because you don’t want to melt it”.
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about children:
“They’re the most honest audiences; they’ll tell you if the show’s a crock of shit, but when they get drawn into it, it’s fantastic”.
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“I love films with kids as protagonists. I think children are the best actors. They have the ability to believe utterly in what they do. It becomes harder to do that as you get older because your confidence gets battered around a bit.”
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about his fatherhood:
“How fabulous it is. It’s the greatest thing in the world”
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“I think it's probably made me a better person”.
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“I’m a pretty hands-on dad. It would be weird to be part of that family unit and not want to be fully involved in your child’s life” .
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“We have a ritual every night, as I think most people do, we read stories, but we also have, after we read stories, we have make up stories every night. She'll (Eliza Jane) ask for two, maybe three make up stories every night. she'll give the subjects And they can be so left of field and she obviously wants the story instantly I have to cobble together stories that can include broken butterfly wings and sandcastles and fairies but... Then a very bizarre thing will be thrown in as well, like a tractor, and so I think, "Okay, off we go."
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about his nomadic life:
“My life at the moment is a bit like my wardrobe. Organised chaos”.
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“At the moment, I’m in Australia for about three months of the year but Kate, Eliza and I try to travel together as much as possible. It’s fantastic to see the world through the untainted eyes of your child”.
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“People juggle work and family all the time and we’re no different.”
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about his Motherland:
“Australia is a phenomenally beautiful country and every time I go away and come back it never ceases to amaze me”.
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“Each time i go back, i'm always amazed at how high and how light the sky is”.
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“I’m passionate about working in Australia. It’s what I know. It’s where I come from”.
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about the homeless, whom he helps, as the ambassador of Wayside Chapel mission:
“That could happen to any of us, it’s perhaps more likely, of course, to happen to an actor, but it could happen to any of us. All it takes is the loss of a job, the end of a relationship, too much drink, trouble with drugs… Anybody could need assis-tance one day”.
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about his charities:
“I live in the area and have known about the Wayside Chapel for many years; it's one of those places everyone's heard about. In fact, I used to come here when Darlinghurst Theatre Company started in the theatre out the back. I like what the Wayside Chapel does and how they do it. Their reputation is a bit eccentric and 'out there', which means they tend to take things as they come rather than be too prescriptive. My impression is that they are family to many people who don't really have that. I think the Wayside Chapel fulfills a very important role in Syd-ney so I was very pleased to be asked to be an ambassador. I also take inspiration from my dad who was a long time volunteer with our local St Vincent de Paul”.
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action or peace?
“It depends on what day you ask me. I love the physicality of this, but some days I would like to be in play, sitting on stage, not saying terribly much and having a cap of tea. I’m attracted to a wide variety of things and I have very eclectic tastes, so it’s not as though I’m locked into doing one particular thing”.
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what does he dream about?
“I’d love to be able to play a musical instrument really well. Piano would be fabu-lous, piano accordion too, or violin, the cello. I do have eclectic tastes there”.
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“I’d love to be able to speak a lot of languages and work in Italian or Finnish cin-ema, but that’s obviously not going to happen”.
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“A long-term ambition of mine is to direct. I’m itching to direct. I’m forever look-ing for stuff, whether it be a book, an idea, a story somebody’s told or even a script that’s come my way. And I’ll only be involved in something I’m 110 per cent pas-sionate about, because it’s a long time to devote to that process”.
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“We did make a pact before we made The Boys that Rowan was going to direct the first one, Rob was going to direct one, then I’m up. That pact still holds.
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“I'd love to be really independently wealthy, if I had that I'd just keep traveling, go to art galleries throughout the world. Now I spend a lot of time in art galleries. I'd be a professional art-gallery-goer”.
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I just want to keep working on quality projects, overseas and, of course, here in Australia. And if I could just see the Sydney Swans win the Premiership, I’d be one very happy guy.”
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about his nickname - Daisy:
“In Australia, we do everything we can to shorten anything, we're very lazy people. If someone's name was Gary, we'd call him Gars. David got shortened to Das, then my sister put a Y at the end. We're just bloody lazy in Australia”.
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