Quotes

[on auditioning for Across the Universe (2007)] Before the audition, I'd never sung a bloody note before in my life. I think that's kind of why they liked me.

[on working with Julie Taymor] She's like working with an, I don't know, atom bomb. One idea will spawn a million other ideas really quickly, but they all follow her logic so you've got to keep up with it. But she's an actor's director. She comes from the theater. That was the major appealing point for me. She's very free. She lets you go. She lets you explore, and then she can completely sort of hang onto an idea and force an idea, which, as you can see, sometimes is a really cool thing.

[on his grotesque scene in The Ruins (2008)] Dude, there are scenes in ('The Ruins')... they're something. Some horrible stuff. People were walking off set when I got my leg chopped off. I took one of those home, by the way. You can imagine trying to get through immigration with a foot.

[on playing a real-life character in Control (2007)] I thought, "What happens if I played him wrongly and he's pissed?" But, no, he was all right, apparently. So I'm yet to meet him, and I sort of want to, because I've played his guitar. But I haven't met him. Which is a bit weird.

[on how he found out he got the job as Alistair in The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 2 (2012)] I was washing up, standing in the kitchen, and the phone rings and next thing you know you are off to tackle a vampire. That's the best bit about it all. Obviously the filming is amazing, but generally when you go for something and you want it and they come back and they want you too that's fantastic. It doesn't get much better than that. So it was good day, just standing in the kitchen washing up - nothing glamorous.

[on comparing his character in The Ruins (2008), to his character in The Crazies (2010)] No, no leg issues, legs are fine although I pulled both hamstrings on my second night which was kind of a little bit worrying. It was freezing, we were standing around for hours, I just took off running and it was like, "Oh, no, maybe you're getting a little too old. You've got to stretch out." You can't just bounce around anymore. So I did both hamstrings and I was like, "Oh my goodness. How am I going to...Russell Clank is going to be hobbling around." But they're better now, so that's good.

[on his character in The Crazies (2010)] Russell's not a particularly bright guy, but I think he's kind of driven. He's a young kid in a small town who, that's it for him man. It's either you're out going hunting with the bears and the boys, or you make something of yourself. And I think the amount of respect that sheriffs get in these small towns and things, it gives you a sense of purpose in the community.

[on preparing for his role in The Ruins (2008)] Yeah, it was...I went through sort of a bizarre phase of renting scary flick after scary flick. I went mental, in fact. I think I watched every single one there is. It was weird. I had this obsession. As I was slowly being desensitized to it, I was, like, "Come on, I want to find something that really fucks me up!" So I just went mad, buying endless DVDs. But it's a hard one, I think, to pull off. Especially now, unless you're going to go into extreme gratuitous violence...which we kind of do, but there's a story there, as opposed to just some guy getting drilled.

[on singing in Across the Universe (2007)] It was very tricky for me in an interesting way because my voice was still breaking, was still settling. Where it is now is definitely not where it was when I go back and I see clips or whatever and I go 'Wow, I actually...' It was in a different place. So I remember thinking, 'My goodness, 'Hey, Jude' was very high for me.' My favorite song was 'Happiness is a Warm Gun.' I could not hit that end note for the life of me, and it was actually Bono, who was obviously in the film, standing there telling me how to scream a note basically, and sort of standing next to him screaming like a lunatic I ended up getting it; so that's the one that makes me laugh every time.

[on filming The Grey (2011)] It was extraordinary to the point where I remember Frank Grillo, myself, Liam (Neeson) standing around saying if anybody doubts the fact that we were on the top of this mountain in minus 30 degree we're going to reach across the table and...absolutely, it was extraordinary. We were up there on top of that mountain and it was a group of guys - I was the youngest, with the mouth, and it really sort of became the dynamic that you kind of see in the movie. I mean we all got on and everyone loved each other, but it was a bunch of guys dealing with minus 30 and frostbite for real whether you're filming it or whether you...doesn't matter. So that was far more of an expedition then filming a movie for me. There wasn't much pretending in that film. Let's put it that way.

[on his dyslexia] I'm completely dyslexic, so academia was never really my path. I remember going through school and doing art, which was the only thing that I actually found fulfilling and I couldn't really figure out why. Then I got into college and started messing around with photography and I realised that it was about getting the images that were in my head out in a way that didn't have to be spelt correctly. You could just view it and it tells the story, so the logical step really was to speaking.

It's an interesting thing with awards for acting - it's nice to know people respect what you do - but being interviewed as me right now, I just feel like such a self-indulgent wanker talking about myself all the time... I struggle with that quite a bit.