On his growing career
"It’s completely chaotic and exciting and I’m enjoying every minute of it. It’s certainly something I could only have wanted but never expected to have."

"Actually, I feel like that every time I come out of the cinema. If that film's about being a hippy, then I'm like, "that's it, I'm gonna grow my own vegetables.""

"I was a big fan of the Beatles before I did the film. And I guess it's the same for everybody but certainly coming form England everyone is very aware of the Beatles or at least I was and my friends were. Also a lot of the bands I would listen to were very vocally inspired by the Beatles so it was just a process of finding the foundation of the music so I would listen to albums like Sargent Pepper's as early as maybe six years old. My parents certainly had the records lying around the house."

"I was just like a kind of jobbing actor like a lot of actors back in London. I was just trying to get work anywhere. I'd done some short films and some independent films and some TV stuff."

"I was unemployed, living in London with really not much to do and now I'm here, it's kind of a pretty mad roller coaster"

On Acting
"I wouldn't say I trained. I did a course in Manchester. I moved there to be in a band but I went to do this course. It was two year course in filmmaking, boom operating, video making, editing a bit of acting and I really got into it when I was there and I was also hanging out with a lot of people who were interested in acting and I ended up writing a short play with three characters and I put that on in a small theatre in Manchester and that's when someone saw me in that and recommended me to his agent back in London and that's how it started off professionally."

"Many different things attract me to a role."

"There was an acting class that was a small part of that, And I worked with a group of people who would make short films: I’d act in theirs; they would act in mine. It was an exciting, creative time where we were just enjoying the process."

"I was into performing and writing poetry, mostly just to enjoy myself, So I put on this show, mainly a collection of poems I had written. It was sort of a day in the life of a more extreme version of myself, just ranting about the world. It was a pure fluke, but an actor came up to me and said he wanted to recommend me to his agent. I was like, What’s an agent? Why do I need one of those?"

"I've always done both and music for me is so, self gratifying and you can sit in a room on your own and play music and I enjoy writing music, and performing music even if its to myself and I'm really, really enjoying acting."

"The overall story, definitely. That's the film. That's what makes it. You can have a lot of great actors and a bad story and it's not going to be a good film. If you have a good story with unknown actors, it can still be beautiful and sometimes even more so."

"When you sit over lunch and discuss the project, how does that work? Do you want me to turn up to lunch as the character? I feel much more comfortable performing and being the character than I do being myself."

"I never expected that I would be a professional actor, but I always did it, I always enjoyed being creative at anything, drawing and music and acting and films and theater and all kinds of stuff. No, doctor, I don’t have the ability."

"I don’t really think about it in genre form, so if the story is not good then that’s kind of enough. I supposed I’ve done the “musical” and the “period” and the “Vegas” movies now."

On his last band
"The last one was called Dilated Spies Don’t search for any great significance behind the name. I think the words were just thrown out one day."

"There are so many actors. I went to see an amazing thing in Austin when I was at SXSW. It was a film called Explicit Ills. A young actor named Marc Webber had directed it. I think he's my age. Paul Dano is in it, Rosario Dawson, and a lot of first-time actors. It was so great watching them and seeing them see the film for the first time and then they did a big Q&A at the end. It was so great to see this actor tell this story that was so real to him and so heartfelt. You could see it when you watched the film. It's those little moments that are what it's all about."

On "celebrity"
""I don't know if you can ever be ready for it, I don't know if you ever believe that anyone's going to notice you."

"It was kind of a low point, I guess, where I was sort of washing dishes in a restaurant and just doing the bare minimum. I remember one day the manager of the place sort of slapped me around the face with a wet, bleeding steak, and I was like, 'I've got to get out of this"

On Acting vs. Music "I don’t have a preference, really. I’ve always done both. I’ve been sort of writing music, and playing music, and being in bands and stuff like that since I was about 15. And kind of acting — it’s always just kind of been both. I’ve never had to separate the two. I’ve never felt I had to separate the two. I still kind of feel like that."

On River Phoenix
"I would love to see what kind of choices he would be making now if he was still around, some of the characters that he would have played. I mean, to me he was like a rock star, you know, he had it all: he had the looks, he had a great name, he had an attitude, an energy, an excitement about him. He was instinctively like a, he was a rebel, you know? He was kind of Bob Dylan to me, at times, and he had a lot to say. And I've never seen too many interviews by him, but the ones that I saw were pretty electric, pretty... he was switched on, definitely."

On River Phoenix
"Definitely River Phoenix is somebody that I thought, "this guy is very cool." I wanted to be like him when I was a kid."

"It was mind blowing. It changed my life completely"

"I don't think anyone had ever done anything like this before and I think everyone was just ready to just indulge and have the most incredible time they possibly could because they knew it was real once in a lifetime opportunity to just one be playing around with Beatles music, some of the greatest music ever written. Two to be working with a director like Julie Taymor who is one of the most visually stunning amazing people out there and then to just be with a young cast all living in New York at the time. We all moved to New York and all lived in the Village and we all stayed in the same neighbourhood and we were all absolutely best friends even with the crew and we just lived in this bubble, this Beatles camp and we'd just sing these songs all day every day."

On the TIFF Premiere
"I didn't know what to expect. I'd never been to a film festival, so it was great walking around and see all these people gather around these cinemas and all these great films; it's an exciting thing. And we were walking past this hotel and there was all this screaming and I thought god, something terrible has happened like an attack or something like that and then we found out that Brad Pitt had just got out of his car two blocks down the road, so it was fun."

On meeting Julie Taymore for the first time
"I’d seen Frida three or four times. I’d been dragged to 1/8the musical 3/8 The Lion King’ and was blown away by its creativity. It got a standing ovation from me - this from a guy who’d been dragged! I didn’t have a chance to be intimidated, I didn’t even have time to process anything."

"I was out of shape because I hadn't sung since we had done Across the Universe cause I've been doing a lot of acting so I hadn't had a lot of opportunity to be singing. So I turned up and I sang like two songs and my voice was shot, like I couldn't even talk. Like when we were doing Across the Universe we were singing all day, every day, 14-hour days, which is unheard of. Even in a band you might sing for like two hours and rehearse but to sing for like 14 hours days like all day you rally have to get your voice to a strong place."

"I didn’t know what it was about; I didn’t even know Julie Taymor was involved, So I walked in with a fairly naive confidence. I think if I had known what was coming, I would have been terrified."

On his favorite filming expierence
"There were two that really stick to my mind, one was when we did the Strawberry Field scene, it was the 25th anniversary of John Lennon's' death that day and Julie took me aside and she reminded me of that and we talked about that and she said listen, this is your studio, and we're going to play the music and you're going to sing and you just do whatever you like, you're the artist, and this is your studio just sing it as many times as you want and just get stuck in. So me and Don Nace the artist I'd been working with, we injected all this red paint into these strawberries and we had these huge canvases which they brought to the set and they had three cameras rolling and the camera guys were in these body suits because I was going to get busy with the paint and they just played the song and I sang and it was very emotional because it was John Lennon's' death.

And the other was the peace march we did down 5th Avenue. As research we'd all watched so much footage of the 60's and so much footage of Vietnam protests and we turn up on the set and I was like fuck its exactly like how I've seen it on screen, with everyone with banners and The Bread and Puppet Theatre Company that did the parade and it was just so mind blowing and there were 500 to 600 extras that day. And me and Evan were at the front of the march and we started marching down 5th Avenue and 600 people were chanting this chant behind us and then they kicked in the music over this massive loud speaker and we had to start singing and I remember my legs were like jelly and Evan was squeezing my hand so it was pretty amazing."

"When I heard they were making a film with music from the Beatles, I thought, What a terrible idea. After we finished shooting, I had withdrawal symptoms: I kept thinking, Why is no one on the street singing? I wanted to burst into song."

"I didn’t know Evan Rachel Wood before I started Across the Universe, but I did get out that film Thirteen before I started I was just like “I hope she’s not like that in real life...” and she wasn’t."

"Across the Universe was a kind of dream job really because it was both molded into one, which then became a whole different difficult and complex thing; having to sing your kind of dialogue. Singing a song is one thing, singing what you’re supposed to be thinking or saying is another. And then trying not to laugh is another. I was pleased I didn’t have to sing in 21]."

"They were holding open auditions, all over the place -- Manchester and Liverpool and London and Ireland and New York. I had no idea what it was -- I didn't know that Julie Taymor was the director. I just kind of turned up."

"I think the fact that it’s a good film means it’ll be around for a while too, which is, obviously, much more important."

"That movie really divided people, but I think that’s a good thing, you know. It wasn’t some soft-focus musical designed just to please MOR fans, or whatever. It was a brave film for Julie to make, and I think those who love Across The Universe really, really love it. Which, to me, is better than having loads and loads of people who thought it was just okay. Or nice."

On asked if his life changed after Across the Universe
"In many ways, completely, and in many ways, not at all. I’ve always been working — in music, and independent films and TV. But it took me up to another level. Julie Taymor made that happen for me. It got me known to an American agency, whereas before I was just in England doing small-budget films. It became everything I’ve dreamed about. I was in England, I was perfectly happy, I was writing music. I was in a band — The Dilated Spies — for a long period of time, and that was a huge part of my life, but that finally came to an end. I was also acting while I was in the band, and doing some really embarrassing stuff — I was just trying to get work. I think the in last acting job I had before “Across the Universe” I was running naked through a pub, covered in petrol, with one line. So I was thinking about maybe doing another career. When the band split up I didn’t know where to take myself, and then the audition for this Beatles musical came up."

"That was the film I did straight after and its finished and its set in Tudor England and Henry the VIII and life inside his court and it's about the rivalry between two sisters and their love for the king and it's a beautiful story and a beautiful script."

"I had just done The Other Boleyn Girl beforehand, so I worked with Natalie [Portman] and Scarlett [Johansson] and Eric [Bana]. They were big time for me." "I remember when I met Natalie Portman, it was in a field in the middle of Milton Keynes, surrounded by cowshit, It was probably the most unglamorous setting I could have met a Hollywood star. We instantly got on and became friends very quickly." "I took Natalie and Scarlett out all the time, when we were in London. They were up for it."

On Natalie Portman
"We became good friends, too. I mean we had to play real brotherly-sisterly type of relationship, which kept going, so I see her every time I’m in New York and we became really good friends, but yeah that was my first experience of like “Wow, these are serious Hollywood actors.”"

"We were learning how to ride horses and getting ourselves into tights and wearing giant codpieces."

"I knew nothing about the book or the story, but they told me it was inspired by true story which always makes my ears prick up a bit more. There’s just an extra sprinkle of interest for me when the story is based on real life."

"It was just so high-energy. It was a page-turner. It was just enjoyable. I had such a good time reading it that I really believed it would be a fun, great film."

"I didn't read the book until I had been offered the part. It all happened very quickly for me. I wasn't even aware of the book. I was just working off the script at that point. I didn't even know it was a true story. When I found out that [it was true] the intrigue and the interest just kind of doubles. This is crazy. Then I read the book, after I had been cast. I saw the changes they had made and the choices they had made and accepted them for what they were. I really then just kept with the script. And then Jeff and I hooked up and spoke a lot. I had a million questions and he had a million stories. That became its own journey."

"I was one of the lucky ones, I have to say. I lost a shitload of money and then had the rush of winning it all back again. That was my first time going, ‘Okay, I understood this place now. I understand how you get addicted to it. I understand why people obsess about it - the absolute horror of losing that amount of money combined with the joy of winning it all back.’ It's pretty amazing. There's also the superstition. I lost a sh*tload of money and I was just going back to the hotel we were staying at and I found a chip in my pocket. I was down nearly $2,000, which is A LOT for me. I just threw this chip down at a table in another casino as I was on my way back to going to bed and I won it all back again. It was a $100 chip. Then I understood - I was on an unlucky table and I found a lucky one. I could understand why people would want to switch tables or switch dealers or go to another casino."

"I almost didn't want people to notice the gradual change until it's like, ‘Yeah, he really has turned into a bit of an asshole.’ I wanted that to feel pretty seamless, I guess. I don't know if it worked but I wanted to keep everything pretty simple. There's something about him that you can feel has changed but I wanted to keep it as real as possible. My fear of the film was that it was going to be like Revenge of the Nerds 3. Speaking to [Director] Rob [Luketic], I realized he was on the same page and didn't want to create that. I think it would have been an easy story to do that with."

On Kate Bosworth
"She takes her acting very seriously, but doesn't take Hollywood and the world around it as seriously, which is nice, and was definitely one of the team. She kept up with us, as far as the drinking was concerned anyway."

On Kevin Spacey
"Just watching how he approaches his roles and holds himself on set. The guy works so hard, running the theater and he was right in the middle of doing all this stuff back at the Old Vic. He's in the job for all of the right reasons. That's good to know."

On Kevin Spacey
"He’s someone I’ve definitely watched most of my life and he has played some pretty unpleasant characters as well, so I just didn’t know which way he was going to go. I just didn’t know who he was going to be as a person."

On Kevin Spacey
"He was cool, though. The minute he found out I had the part, he phoned me up and was kind of like this number showed up on my phone that I didn’t know and I was like “Hello? Who’s this?” and he goes “It’s Kevin Spacey...” It’s like “Holy shit!”

I think I called him Kev like straight away and it was like “Oh no… he’s just going to hate me,” but then he invited me down to the old Vic Theater in London and we had lunch and went to go see his play and then we hung out a bit after that, so it was nice because I kind of knew him… I felt like I knew him a little bit before we started the project and once you get a few cocktails down him, he’s fine. He’s good for a laugh."

On Kevin Spacey
"It was cool. He’s an amazing actor, a great guy, fun guy, and a very intense guy … I’ve seen so many of his films and he’s someone I certainly have been so aware of … I remember he phoned me when I first got the part and I was back in London, and I just got a phone call and it was an anonymous number and I answered it, and said ‘hello.’ And he said, (in an intense American accent) ‘Hello, this is Kevin Spacey.’ But then we went out and we had lunch back in London because he lives in London. I went to see his play that he was doing at the Old Vic … [and] then we just hung out then and it was cool. He just felt like a kind of friend."

"By the end of it, we were a month and a half in Vegas, which, if you've been there, is way too long in that city. So I think by the end of it we were all pretty desperate to get out of there, taste a bit of normality. And you know, Boston was just the perfect kind of answer to that -- it's such a down-to-earth sort of city, you know: great bars, get a normal pint."

"It was a good deal. It was such a young cast, which you know sometimes you can find yourself in a film where you are the only young person there, so it was… and everyone was such a character… Josh Gad, the guy who plays Miles… Aaron Yoo plays Choi… Jacob (Pitts)… Everyone was just such extreme… you don’t get people like that in England, so it was just a blast. We literally hung out and very quickly got on as a group of friends, just because there are so many ridiculous things to do in Vegas. You know, we went out and got drunk and hung out and got up to mischief and then the next day, we were just talking hysterically about all of the shit that had happened the night before and that just instantly created a bond."

"when you come from England, the only real kind of gambling that you do is, you know, you bet on the horses or you put some money on the dogs or there’s a machine in a pub or something like that, but that is honestly as far into gambling as I kind of got. We just don’t have a place like Vegas anywhere near England, so yeah it was just a whole new world for me in every way possible."

"That was the deal with the film that our “research” was just to indulge in Vegas life as much as humanly possible. Unfortunately, they didn’t give us any sort of money to play with. We had to use our own money."

"We got to learn a kind of basic strategy to blackjack, so we kind of know when you hit, when you double down, when you split and all of the kinds of things like that, but yeah as far as the card counting goes… there’s just no way."

"I think Rob did a great job. As far as that, blackjack isn’t a very interesting game, but the way he filmed it was just amazing."

"When we were filming, there would be extreme close ups of doing that (he pushes his pointer and middle finger across the table like he’s pushing cards away) and they would be like “do it again” and it’d be like “what are we doing?” Rob was always saying “Just trust me. It’ll make sense when you see the film” and it totally did. It really gets you inside the head of a player, I think, and you feel the tension when a card goes over."

On infamous Vegas stories
"They amount of drunken weddings I saw was unbelievable. You would just watch these people just throw their lives away in more ways than one, one losing a lot of money and then going off to get married and you’re like “That’s a good start! Best of luck with that.”"

"I really thought there was a point when we were filming that I was slowly going insane. I remember looking at Kate [Bosworth] and I was like “I have to get out of here.” My eyes were literally buzzing it was so bad and the audio of the room is like [makes weird noises of dloy machines going off] all fucking day, six days a week… no, seven days a week.

You can’t escape it and because we were filming in the casinos all day and then of course we would go out gambling, because that’s all there is to do in the evening. I was just like “I have got to get out of here man,” so Boston is the perfect remedy for that. I remember there was this one night on a weekend and we all went out and we partied and just got up to whatever you get up to in Vegas and then the next day we were on set pretty much filming exactly what we had done the night before as part of the film, so it was like “I have got to get out of here, man… This is too much.”"

On seeing the film completed
"I saw it a while ago. When you’re making the film you have no concept of how kind of visual it’s going to look. Especially in the scenes when we’re playing cards and all that kind of stuff. While we were shooting those scenes it was fairly kind of tedious kind of work; pushing chips and flipping cards and all that kind of stuff. And then when you see the film you see how dramatic it looks. It was a shock to all of us, I think. The director [Robert Luketic] kept saying just trust me, trust me, it’s going to look great … stuff that you kind of don’t like doing as much. Actually you want to do the kind of big shouting scenes or all the meaty scenes or whatever. But we kind of stuck with it and I think it paid off."

On card counting Math concepts
"Couldn’t get my head round it at all. I mean we tried. On the weekends I had to play basic strategy blackjack, which is pretty much all you can do unless … you’re a mathematical genius, which is why I think it’s so specific to these people’s story. It’s just not something everyday people can do."

"I was kind of approached. I was shooting another film called The Other Boleyn Girl at the time, and I just got a call saying that Robert Luketic, the director, wanted to meet me about this film that he’s making … I guess the idea of these kind of everyday people just going against the system like that and coming out on top, which is always a nice take on life. It was just a feel good movie that was exciting to read as a script and I think exciting to watch as a film. And I got to go to Vegas. And I got to wear designer suits which I had never worn before."

"I can play basic strategy blackjack as good as the next man really."

"We all learn when to split, when to double down, you know the basic rules on how to play the game. But taking it to the level that these guys took it, they were counting the cards and they were able to work out when a deck has a lot of face cards and 10 cards, when it’s clean of those cards and when it is heavy and when it’s light and all that kind of stuff."

"They had the best job in college. Anyone else is working in McDonald’s. There was a benefactor giving them the money, they were paid a wage and they would just gamble all day just playing out the system of a structured routine and earning millions of dollars."

On card counting
"I think more people should try and do it, they are using their minds mathematically to take back money. Vegas is immoral, Vegas is completely immoral. The whole structure of it, the fact that they know exactly what they’re doing and they are taking your money. So if you can find a way to get it back, hats off to it, I think."

On having to have an America Accent
"It’s always a challenge. I enjoy a challenge that I’ve never done before. Anyone from England always thinks they can do an alright American accent. And you quickly learn once you’re put in a room with a dialect coach that you can’t … I think I maybe 2 weeks to learn how to do it before we started shooting, so it was pretty rushed. I was nervous about it."

On gambling with his own money
"It was close to $2,000, which is a lot for me. When I left the table I was just so disheartened, I was disgraced. I was just like, ‘That is real money and I just blew $2,000 on this stupid game. And then I found a chip in my pocket as I was leaving and I thought, ‘Oh well, I might as well lose it all.’ And I threw it down, and literally won it all back again. So I got the pain of losing and then the joy of winning all in one go."

"Coming from England, it’s not really — I mean we play poker for maybe matchsticks or spare change, or something like that … We don’t have a casino kind of culture as much as you guys do over here. And we certainly don’t have an equivalent to Las Vegas. So that was part of the appeal really, to sort of learn this whole new world that I didn’t know anything about."

"It was the only time ever a film set seemed inconspicuous. I remember I went to the toilet in the casino and I remember I came back and I couldn’t find the film set. It’s like, it’s in here somewhere. That’s how crazy it is … We were kind of sectioned off in areas of the casino. We couldn’t shut down the whole place. So of course the everyday life and the machines and all that were all going on whilst we were kind of playing, which helped the atmosphere of the film, I think. Somebody would be doing a scene when somebody would be like, “Wheel of Fortune,” and we’d have to cut and wait for that to finish."

"A lot of times we shot 6 day weeks and we only got one day off. I remember we did a scene where on the weekend we’d all been out and partied and did all this crazy stuff that you do in Vegas, and then we woke up and pretty much the next of filming was acting what we had just done the night before. The line between reality and work was slowly blurring. Vegas it’s easy to kind of get into trouble over there. Not trouble, but fun, which we definitely did."

"I needed to feel how Ben would have felt, so, I just put myself in harm’s way. You just start doing all the obvious stuff, like tipping your ear a lot, scratching your nose, in the hope that one of these places would hand you over to the police. I think the problem was, we were only playing with $5 chips..."

"I was told that [director] Robert Luketic was interested in meeting me for this project called “21.” It was explained to me that it was inspired by this true story about these college students who went to Las Vegas. Normally, any time someone says, “This is based on a true story,” your ears kind of slightly prick up a bit — there’s an extra sprinkle of interest when it’s based on things that happened in real life. I read it, and it was an exciting roller coaster journey that just keeps going right till the end, and I thought it was a project I wanted to get involved with."

"Watching a game of cards is not the most exciting thing cinematically. We would spend hours just lifting cards and moving chips, and Robert was saying, “Trust me, guys, just keep going.” He would shout, “Jim, would you just blink for me.” It was hard with all of this mad stuff going on around us, but he created something where you feel like you’re inside the game or insides the players’ heads, with the tension of turning the card over, or the sound effect that goes with that."

On the 'smackdown' scene with Laurence Fishburne
"He would just come in and I never knew what he was gonna do. For most of it I had my hands tied behind my back, and he’s a giant guy. I remember one time sitting there, tied up, and he was kind of sizing up his shot, working out how far he had to reach, and he said, “Jim, you don’t mind if I give you a little tap, do you?” And I said, “No, that’s cool. Do what you have to do.” And he really hit! But he’s kind of skilled in that. He kept saying don’t worry, and I kept thinking that he’s Morpheus [The Matrix]."

"I’ve never been to Vegas before. I only knew about it from films and most of them, like Leaving Las Vegas and The Cooler, are fairly depressing. “It was as crazy as I imagined it to be. People told me that you should only go to Vegas only go for three or four days. I was there for a month and a half,” he said. “At one point during filming I realized I had not even been outside - I mean outdoors — for five days straight. We filmed in the casino, we stayed in the casino, and we just never left. It was manic."

"We were all desperate to get out of there and get to Boston, It’s nice at the end of the day to go finding a good Irish bar - which is not hard to do in Boston - and settle in for a while."

"'It's hoodie culture and very much about the streets of London"

On Ellen Page
"I actually did a film, Mouth To Mouth, with Ellen Page years and years ago, when she was about 15, so I knew her a long time ago. It was a no budget, indie flick and I don’t think I’ve even seen the film!" I’m very proud of her. She was just incredible. You could tell that even then when she was 15, You knew she had this ridiculous head on her shoulders, an enormous amount of talent and passion for what she was doing. The film we made was a tough film to make, and she was the main part in that. It was tough. I remember she had to shave her head bald, which she did willingly.I keep thinking our paths might cross, but they haven’t. I’ve seen our photos next to each other, but our paths haven’t crossed yet. I hope so, as it’ll be great to see her"

On Co-Stars Harrison Ford and Sean Penn
"One part of your brain wants to be utterly professional – you know, get on with your job, impress these giants – and another part of your brain just wants to ask them loads of questions about the great movies they’ve made. I tried to find a happy balance between those two approaches..."

On the song his character has to sing
"I said, If I’m going to do this scene, can I write the song he plays? It was so cool, for the first time writing a song through the eyes of the character."