What's important is the work that you're doing, not the country that you're in. I would much rather be in a play at the Royal Court than in Los Angeles making 'Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel.'
It's difficult to gauge that. With a bad guy you just know you're bad. To play a nice guy is harder - unless you are a very nice person like me of course.
I really like working. I can't think of a job I didn't like. I was in an Alvin and the Chipmunks movie, which is not my idea of folk art; but I really enjoyed making it, and everyone was really nice.
I just downloaded the new Alvin and the Chipmunks album! They're the only guys that make music in my key!
I did a play once where a reviewer said, 'Martin Freeman's too nice to play a bad guy.' And I thought: 'Well, bad guys aren't always bad guys, you know?' When I see someone play the obvious villain, I know it's false.
It's nice to play a three-dimensional person every once in a while for a change of pace.
I wanted to play a good guy after doing this lunatic on The Sopranos for two years. And then they did the sequel to Bad Boys, where I get to play the barking captain again.
It's not the 'nice' guy who brings about real social change. 'Nice' guys look nice because they're conforming. It's the 'bad' guys, who only look nice a hundred years later, that are the real Dynamic force in social evolution.
If the pace of change outside is moving more quickly than the pace of change inside, you get a bit left behind.
The number one thing for me is diversity. I always want to ensure that people can't put me in a box. I can play a bad guy, I can play a good guy, I can play a good bad guy, I can be the host of a show, I can be serious, and I can be funny.
I always play these bad guys, and I'm really a nice guy.
I'm not a nice guy on the field, and I've never really respected a guy who's been a 'nice guy' on the field. I want opposition to be hard, to play to win the game for their team.
I play a character in the WWE and everybody hates my character. I'm the evil villain bad guy. Whenever people meet me, they're like, 'Wow, you're such a nice guy. We never expected that.'
I get a lot of people saying to me, 'Oh, you're the actor who plays the nutters,' and I'm not. I'm the guy who plays human beings. I understand why the characters are doing what they're doing. When you play a villain, you don't play a villain: you play a human being doing what he thinks he needs to do to get what he wants.
What makes 'The Wire' a beautiful story is how true to life it is. In other shows, you have a good guy and a bad guy. In 'The Wire,' bad guys are trying to be good, good guys are doing bad. You have real life. The people who do bad get bad things done to them.
As an actor in the theater you're taught that you never play a bad guy. You have to love who you are. You can't say, "Oh, I'm a bad guy." How do you play that?