My height can be a problem. A lot of directors and photographers are sometimes not happy because I'm pretty tall and especially if I work with short actors the difference can be pretty massive.

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

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

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.

To experience intimacy in marriage, both partners need to feel safe.

Every call of Christ leads into death.

Once you've grown up in space, moving on means moving out, not going back to Earth. Nobody wants to be a groundpounder.

In the world of minor lunacy the behaviour of both the utterly rational and the totally insane seems equally odd.

See that your children be taught, not only the labors of the earth, but the loveliness of it.

First principle: never to let one's self be beaten down by persons or by events.

Innovation implies high risk, and with high risk comes failure, so you've got to be prepared for that, but if you don't risk, then your business goes stale very quickly.

No! No! Never acknowledge the limitations of man. Smash all boundaries! Deny whatever your eyes see. Die every moment, but say: Death does not exist.'

Be your own leader, be your own self, step out of my shadows and be your own person.

What pleases the public is lively and vivid delineation which makes no demands on the intellect; but passionate and absolutist youth can only be enthralled by a problem.