Emile Hirsch

“We want to do for 'Hamlet' what Baz Luhrmann did for 'Romeo and Juliet' in terms of like a really cool kind of re-imagining.”

“I'm not staying away from any genre. I'm trying to get scripts that I like.”

“Maybe you will be afraid and maybe you will fail, but the courage to take risks in any part of your life is, I feel, a very worthwhile way to live.”

“'Brokeback Mountain' just blew me away. I'll always remember talking to Heath Ledger just after he finished that movie and he was going on about working with Ang and how incredible he was.”

“I think I've always been half out of my shell and half in. Sometimes I can be extremely wild and sometimes I can be extremely shy. It just depends on the day.”

“The genres are widening. I don't think that there's as many limitations on the kinds of projects that actors can do as there once was.”

“There's something just so kind of smooth about politicians.”

“How much cooler was Oz than seeing the little dude behind the curtain?”

“The willingness to keep learning is, I think, the most important thing about trying to be good at anything. You never want to stop learning.”

“I'm a very, very conservative driver.”

“When I got a lap dance, because I was 17, they had to put a massive pillow between me and the girl when she was grinding me. It was weird, yet pleasurable.”

“Well, when I was a kid and I watched 'Speed Racer,' I used to always watch it in the morning with my cereal. And when I ate the cereal, I would pour soda into the cereal because we never really had milk for some reason, I don't know.”

“I don't have an interest in any car that isn't good for the environment, other than maybe an aesthetic quality in a picture book.”

“In Dogtown, skateboards are like bikes to the Chinese.”

“I identify with someone wanting something to work out, but not being able to get through the rocks to the river.”

“I've realized that what you think of when you make a 'big movie,' if it's actually a green screen movie, it's like doing independent New York theater because you don't have any backgrounds or props. So it's kind of like making the lowest budgeted film you could possibly imagine, plus $100 million.”

“I've definitely had ideas and plans that sometimes exceed my means and capabilities.”

“When you're reading Thoreau you look at Hollywood differently, let me tell ya!”

“A lot of the stuff in 'Speed Racer' has never been done before, from it having a multi-tone, to it having a retro-cool family movie, to having the photo-realism with the CG-backgrounds and infinite focus the way they worked with these digital cameras, to even the color experimentation.”

“Artistic ambition is important. And it seems it would be a great time to do some theatre, like a new extreme.”