(On turning down the chance to play Richard Gere's character in the Harvey Weinstein-produced film Chicago) "I thought I was too young for the role. You have some 34-year-old guy up against Catherine Zeta-Jones and Renée Zellweger and it becomes a different movie. At one point, Harvey was telling me they were thinking of Kevin Spacey, and I told him, 'That's exactly right. You should hire him.' Then I was in New York when the movie opened and the queue was around the block. I sat down and thought that I had probably made the biggest mistake. But I still honestly think that it was the right thing to do. I still think I was too young for that part." "Finally something my family can be proud of" "Now I meet people with full-color Wolverine tattoos on their backs. Thank God I did okay, because I think if I handn't, they'd spit on me in the street." - on his role of Wolverine "There is something very secretive about the way they cast that role. I've never had an official call asking: 'Are you interested or not', but there's no guy I know who wouldn't want that role - and that includes me. Anyone who says otherwise is lying." [on the now [Nov. 2004] opened spot for the next James Bond] "I never read comics as a kid, and when I was slipped the comics under my trailer door, Bryan Singer didn't want us to read them. He was very frightened that we would come out with these 2D characters, and I was amazed at how helpful they were, the images more than the story. The images, and how they capture emotion or an action sequence in just, say, three images - I have to say I used them as inspiration for some of the fighting stances or techniques. The way Wolverine stands and how he looks." - [on Comic books] "I didn't do the motion capture work; I didn't do any of that. I don't know if they've used my voice or not, they probably have.. I did a lot of recordings on the first movie for dolls and videogames, so they probably just used the same stuff." - [on Wolverine videogame] "People can stick pins in it, put in the freezer. It's far more dangerous than a videogame." - [about his action figures] "The character I play is actually only 1.6 meters [5' 3"]. Before I had any kind of acting profile I was encouraged to lie about my height. I was told to say I was about six foot [1.83m] tall. I was worried about it when I first had my audition because pleasing fans of the franchise is important. My height was brought up on the Internet. They didn't think it was right. A lot of people who never met me think I'm very short. Jimmy Marsden (Cyclops), who's only 10cm [4 inches] shorter than me, was put on boxes and platforms in our scenes together. You'll notice that every character in X-men looks taller than me." "I've always felt that if you back down from a fear, the ghost of that fear never goes away. It diminishes people. So I've always said 'yes' to the thing I'm most scared about. The fear of letting myself down -- of saying 'no' to something that I was afraid of and then sitting in my room later going, 'I wish I'd had the guts to say this or that' -- that galvanizes me more than anything." "Acting is something I love. It's a great craft that I have a lot of respect for. But I don't think it's any greater challenge than teaching 8 year olds or any other career. In my life, I try not to make it more important than it is and I just hope that rubs off on the people around me." "Becoming a father, I think it inevitably changes your perspective of life. I don't get nearly enough sleep. And the simplest things in life are completely satisfying. I find you don't have to do as much, like you don't go on as many outings." "I have shocking teeth... I'm being a little facetious-I just went to the dentist the other day, and he looked at my teeth and went, 'Oh, my God, you've got gray teeth.'" "Now I meet people with full-color Wolverine tattoos on their backs. Thank God I did okay, because I think if I hadn't, they'd spit on me in the street."