I'm constantly embarrassed at the level of attention actors get and the level of money that we get. It's completely disproportionate.

Personally I don't believe in bad people. I think there's always a reason for people acting badly.

A character on screen that's the 'good guy' or the 'bad guy,' they're never interesting. There's got to be an internal struggle, the duality is important to find.

In movies we tend make things black and white: you're either this, or you're that.

In terms of jobs, I'm an actor. There's gotta' be depth there. I'd never say yes to something just to play the hot guy. That's not what I'm interested in.

I don't want to ever think that I don't know what to do. I want to deal with my own things, to perform my own roles, to be like, "I did this."

I've lived in California for six years and I've never surfed.

TV is a very sensitive thing. If you're not happy with what you're doing, I don't think you should do it because you will do it for awhile.

I come from a family of pacifists, so it's not like I was going to join the war. Sweden is not like the States or England where you might get sent to Afghanistan next month.

Sweden is a small country and, well, our family's pretty prominent in that world, I guess. And I really didn't like the sound of just being 'the fourth acting Skarsgard.

I have three older brothers, and each one of them has chosen one of my parents' education. Two of them are actors, and the third is a doctor as my mother is.

The idea of life is maximizing your time and living and effective life

My brother Bob doesn't want to be in government - he promised Dad he'd go straight.

The pace of the game demanded a referee who was fit. It is an indictment of our game. You see referees abroad who are as fit as butcher's dogs. We have some who are fit. He wasn't fit.

If the 19th [century] was the century of the individual (liberalism means individualism), you may consider that this is the "collective" century, and therefore the century of the state.

Why in the world do the insurance companies get to be the boss of birth? That's what I want to know.

Network marketing is really the greatest source of grass-roots capitalism, because it teaches people how to take a small bit of capital, that is your time, and build the American dream.

You can do crap work in a big movie, and it does good things. You can do great work in a movie no one sees, it does nothing. That's the way it goes.

People will disapprove of you if you're unhappy, or if you're happy in The Wrong Way.

I'd say the music influences the writing - the music and rhythm of the prose - much more than the writing influences the music.

It's a dismally lonely business, writing.