Anson Mount

“I'm not interested in the heroes or the villains. I'm interested in playing people.”

“I think the American Western laid down a kind of subject matter that's about following your instinct or following your gut and having a sort of removed quality from your humanity. And I think Clint Eastwood helped to establish that.”

“I love getting paid to ride a horse.”

“You don't need to like your protagonists.”

“About once a year, I do these long-distance relays with some friends of mine, and it takes about 27 or 28 hours to complete it.”

“The whole cable-TV original programming just changed the nature of television.”

“I like my work to stand on its own as much as possible.”

“I can't claim I'm truly a man's man, I'm just as much of a dork and a crybaby sometimes as anybody else.”

“I think all of us have a hero and a villain in us.”

“Life fundamentally does not change depending on work or fame or success.”

“I grew up in a place where a lot of my friends had horses, so I grew up riding. But I'm not an expert.”

“I like being able to be a man.”

“In the last two or three decades, there's been a feminization of the man in popular media that I've never really understood.”

“I love the long-form format of television. I love being able to develop a character, over a long period of time.”

“For me, acting is play. It's just play and it's playing make believe really, really well.”

“Good and bad are really arbitrary words when it comes to character.”

“I don't care about sympathy. I care about playing a character who's understandable and clear.”

“I'm an enemy of exposition. I feel there's no need to overstate.”

“I don't know how to put on any tough guy pretensions.”

“It's really rare that you come across a Southern character that's not stereotyped, vilified or aggrandized.”