"i was full of jack london and jack kerouac"

"I sometimes think I'm so boring. I'll read an article about how Bob Dylan manipulated his image, put on these false personas, pretended he was like Woody Guthrie, and I think, what's the obligation in an interview to play into some mystique? But if you do, I think you end up dead."
"Acting was something that came very easily to me. It fell in my lap. But the people I admired the most were not really movie stars. I was full of Jack London and Jack Kerouac."

Twice during his 20s he took a two-year leave of absence, once to go to NYU and study English (he dropped out when a part came up), and then to write a novel. In each case he says he was testing himself to see if acting was just a phase, and in each case he returned to it with modified expectations.

emma brockes. the gaurdian, december 2000