Thomas Jane

In an Indian film that I did when I was 17 years old, and that's how I got into acting. I was living in Maryland, and some Indians came to Washington DC looking for a blonde kid to appear in an Indian film. It was like a Romeo and Juliet love story between a white American and an Indian girl. They wanted me to stay in India and I did another film over there, they gave me an apartment, a car and I was an Indian movie star at 17. But then I decided to return to America, studied acting, did a lot of theatre. Show less «

"You gotta start somewhere. Whether it's indie film or whatever. Anything's a start, wherever it happens to fall. But, you can't just come out of nowhere and jump into an $80 million film, I don't think you'll ever see that happen. But I've always wanted to do a picture like this." - On his indie career start and Deep Blue Sea (1999). Show less «

I think that leading man status opens up a number of doors for you and allows you the opportunity to do a number of different kinds of roles, so I don't see myself leaving behind character work just because I can headline movies. But it's certainly more interesting to be where I'm at in my life now, to be a more integral part of the process of creating a film and taking less of a backseat and more of a front seat driver opportunity is interesting to me now. Show less «

"I try to work with people who are better than me. I for a long time considered myself a journeyman actor where I was learning my skills and honing my craft and waiting for the opportunity for something like this (The Punisher (2004)) to come along. I'm not good at vocalizing what my exact approach is, but I believe in using whatever works and making a sort of amalgamation of a number of different styles or methods to get the job done. I think that's what a lot of film acting is about. It's sort of a mongrel like approach these days. We use a number of different theories or beliefs to get you where you need to go. It's a personal experience. I don't believe in one particular system or method or another." - On his approach to acting. Show less «

"It was about six months of brutal training, twice a day at the gym, a Navy Seal guy would come over to my house and take me to the firing range, firing live rounds down the range, primary and secondary weapons. Learning edge weapons training, one man military incursions, hand to hand combat, Filipino martial arts as well as Israeli martial arts. It was brutal." - On his physical training for The Punisher (2004). Show less «

"When I played Mickey Mantle in 61* (2001). We were operating on a real high level. All the athletic training that we had to go through was something that you had to condition your body at a high level of athletic skill and we were playing baseball for three months. I was constantly getting injured, pulling muscles in my shoulder, muscles in my back, muscles in my groin, leg muscles. I was always having electric stimulation going at some point in my body. And the swings that we were taking were real. There's just a high amount of injury when you're playing a sport at that level". Show less «

I don't go to work to have fun. I turn up, say my lines, collect my check, and then go home to my wife and kid. I ain't there to stick around and laugh and cut up with people, and I ain't there to giggle and play jokes and pull people's underwear down and stuff. Show less «

There was a time when I just did [movies] to get the experience and training. Now, I only do them because they are so good that I have no choice, and Stander (2003) was a prime example. I feel strongly that I shouldn't get involved with anything unless I'm 100 per cent committed. I don't need to go out and work so much. I just want to spend time with my kid. I am turning down as much crap as I can until I find something that really bowls me over. Show less «

I'm of the mind that life is a risk. Everytime you leave your house, it's a risk. I see no reason to go through life with my hands behind my back for any reason. It doesn't mean I'd be stupid or foolish but I wouldn't let anything stop me that I felt I could do. Risks are what make life a real thrill. Show less «

(On filming Stander (2003)) Three locations everyday. There were more locations than there were days of shooting. I had 17 costume changes and often multiple costume changes in one day of shooting. It was a lot of work for everybody. I knew that going in and I didn't want to do the movie. I think I turned it down twice. It seemed like so much work. But I'm learning that when I don't want to do something, it's usually a good sign that there's something in there that I need to do. Show less «

(On turning down - then accepting - his role in Stander (2003)) I just couldn't not do it. The price of not doing it was more than the price of doing it. The accent, embodying this other tortured individual, emotional roller coaster ride that he went on, he was a health nut and I had to work out, the shooting schedule, being half way around the world - everything just said don't do this fuckin movie. But I couldn't not do it - he was too strong. Show less «

(In 2004) The more well-known I get, it seems the more limited my choices become. So I have to pick and choose and I have to pick a pigeon hole I'm comfortable in. The curse in being pigeon holed is getting stuck in something you really don't like. I had to find something I like and so w/The Punisher (2004) and Stander (2003), I'm creating a niche for myself that I enjoy and I have something to contribute to whereas if I kept doing movies like The Sweetest Thing (2002), I'd probably be flipping burgers by now. Show less «

I like broad comedies, hard core action, serious drama, science fiction, I love horror films. What draws me to them is their purity of vision that they are exactly what they say they are - that their a great embodiment of a horror film or a great drama. I guess that's what draws me to a film - the quality of a film. Show less «

(2011, on Padamati Sandhya Ragam) I was 16 years old, I'd dropped out of high school, I was working at a hardware store and taking acting classes above a liquor store in Bethesda, Maryland. My acting coach, Ralph Tabakin, called me up and said, "There's these Indians in town, and they're looking for a blond-haired, blue-eyed kid to be in their Indian Bollywood movie." And I said, "Ralph, I don't have blue eyes. I can't go." Ralph said, "Well, you got blue eyes now. You go down there and get the part. And I get 10 percent, 'cause I'm acting as your agent in this regard." And I did, and I did. And he did. And I ran around America with a crew of about 30 or 40 Indians and a real stuck-up Indian starlet bitch, and we made this singing, dancing Bollywood-style Romeo-and-Juliet-type love story about an Indian girl and an American boy. And then we all ran off to India, where I lived for six months finishing the film, and it was probably... well, it was definitely a defining experience of my life and career, because I came back to America and... They didn't have money to pay me, so they gave me the RV that we used to make the movie and drive the crew around in. And I sold it, bought a 1969 Camaro, and drove it out to California to be an actor. But I miss all the singing and dancing now that I'm in Hollywood. Show less «

(2011, on making The Punisher) You know, I remember the workout regiment and training with the Navy SEALs was intense. That, and somebody forgot to replace the real knife with the prop knife for the scene with Kevin Nash, and I ended up stabbing him in the chest. And, you know, he's about 7'4", and... that was an interesting moment. [Laughs.] I still don't think they've gotten a Punisher movie right. They've made three of 'em now, and he's yet to be done correctly. Show less «

(2011, on Magnolia) I was supposed to play two parts. But Paul (Thomas Anderson) got mad at me. Because I took another movie. I wanted to work with Gene Hackman, so I took this Gene Hackman film [Under Suspicion], but the schedule overlapped into Magnolia, and so I couldn't play the two parts in Magnolia. I had to only play one. Paul never forgave me. And the movie with Gene Hackman, of course, has been totally forgotten. Show less «

(2011, on Deep Blue Sea) Another disappointment for me. I wanted to do something with the leading-man-type character of Carter Blake, and... y'know, it's just so hard to do something within the studio system. It's so hard to break the mold. But it's a movie that never dies. I mean, they're still playing Deep Blue Sea on cable all the time. And it was my first experience at making a big studio film. We shot it at the old Titanic studio, down in Mexico, and it was five months of eating fish tacos next to the big water tank in Rosarita. It was gorgeous, so beautiful, and so much fun to do that movie. I'm sure it'll never die...When we first screened it in New York City, we thought... Well, unfortunately, Warner Brothers had already kind of given up on the film, so when we screened it, they didn't assign a whole hell of a lot of publicity. They didn't assign a lot of advertising dollars to the movie. But then we had a premiere in New York City where, after Samuel L. Jackson got eaten, the audience didn't stop howling or screaming for five whole minutes. The scene after Samuel L. Jackson got eaten was completely lost, because you couldn't fucking hear a thing, which... I was thinking to myself, "Well, that's good, 'cause that's a shitty scene." But people loved, loved, loved the movie, so Warner Brothers tried to catch up by pumping more dollars into it, but the movie was already going to open, and since they hadn't pushed it as hard as they wished they would've, it was too late. So we opened second to The Blair Witch Project. We opened at No. 2, and-this was the first time this had happened in the history of film-a tiny little independent, low-budget film named The Blair Witch Project opened at No. 1 at the box office and beat out an $80 million studio film. And to make it doubly painful for me, The Blair Witch Project was shot in the woods of Maryland, which is my home area. They shot in my back yard, basically. I literally used to play in those woods where The Blair Witch Project was shot. So, yeah, that was a fun time. Show less «

(2011, on 61*) Just the greatest experience in the world. Playing baseball and making a movie at the same time? It was the best experience I've ever had making a film. Reggie Smith, teaching me how to switch-hit. Reggie was No. 3 in switch-hitting home runs behind Mickey Mantle, and coached for the Dodgers and... Just a great, great baseball player. God, playing catch with Reggie Smith in the morning, every morning, for a couple months, it literally brought tears to my eyes. Billy Crystal knew every single game that the Yankees played in the '61 season, and he knew every play. And he'd act out all the different baseball players' parts in every play, and what happened and what they did. We'd just look around, us actors, in awe at Billy as he acted out every single player's job on the team. And that's why the baseball stuff looks so authentic-because it is. We're recreating plays that actually happened in every single scene. I look at it now, and I don't recognize myself. They were so good at teaching me how to play baseball that I don't recognize that athlete. Show less «

(2011, on The Mist) It was one of the rare, rare occasions that a great screenwriter like Frank Darabont just sends me a script out of the blue and says, "Read this, I want you to play the lead." Y'know, me getting sent scripts and getting asked to read something and being told they want me to play the lead is nothing new. That happens a lot. But when it's a script as good as The Mist and it's Frank Darabont directing, that doesn't happen often to me. So that was great...Stephen King said the ending was better than the book, and he said that he wished he'd thought of it. Which is, I think, the highest praise for the film. I love the film. The black-and-white version is really the only version to watch. If you have the Blu-ray or the special-edition DVD, don't bother with the color. Watch the black-and-white. It's the way to see the film. Show less «

(2011, on The Thin Red Line) Terry Malick offered me three parts in The Thin Red Line. I was busy shooting other movies while he asked me the first two. I shot two other movies, which tells you how long Terry shot the film for, because when I finished those two other movies, he called me again and said, "I've got this other little part, it's just a day of shooting." I said, "I'll do it, fine." And he flew me in to this tiny little island that we were shooting on, the Solomon Islands, and I shot for a day with Terry Malick, who spent half that day running around the island with John Toll, the DP, shooting butterflies. So when he wasn't doing takes with me, Jon and Terry would take the camera and run off. And I'd be, like, "Where the hell are they going?" And they'd shoot butterflies flying around, and then they'd come back, and Terry would say, "Uh, okay, where were we?" And I'm in the film more from shooting that one day than a lot of guys who shot for a year with Terry and got cut out of the film. And I asked Terry why I'm in the movie, and he said, "There's no real good reason for your scene to be in the movie. I just couldn't cut you out." And I think that's the highest praise I've ever gotten. Show less «

(2011, on Stander) I did that in Africa, and... I get the most comments about Punisher, Stander, and 61*. Stander is a true story about a South African policeman who starts robbing banks. I turned the part down three times. And the producers were so persistent that I finally caved. I said to myself, "Nobody's going to want to see a movie where everybody has a funny South African accent. It's never gonna sell." But the part was so fucking good. And that's the other thing: I thought, "This is an awful lot of work, to learn an accent and to play a real person. That's a lot of research. That's an awful lot of work for a movie that nobody's going to watch." But they finally got the better of my artistic sensibility or judgment, and I caved and I did the film. And it's probably the film I'm proudest of. Show less «

(2011, on Buffy The Vampire Slayer) Man, the table read... I knew we were making something special when Joss Whedon had a table read. Donald Sutherland and Paul Reubens and Rutger Hauer and this beautiful blonde chick [Kristy Swanson], and all these great actors were gathered around this table, and we had this brilliant table read, where it was, like, so funny and so irreverent, and the acting was so good. I was like, "Wow..." And this was sort of my first real role in a movie-I had, like, one or two days working on this film, and it's where I met my good friends David Arquette and Paul Reubens. So it's a special movie for me. Johanna Ray, the casting director, she found me in a little theater in Hollywood doing plays, and she started bringing me in for stuff, and that's how I started working as an actor. So she really started my career. And I thought, "Boy, if all movies are like this, this is fantastic!" But of course they're not. Not all movies are written by Joss Whedon and star incredible actors. But I have a soft spot in my heart for Buffy The Vampire Slayer, let me tell you. Show less «

(2011, on his role as Clay Bicks in Medium) The creator of Medium, Glenn Gordon Caron, is a fan, and he was always bugging me, saying, "If I wrote a part for you, would you do it? If I wrote a part for you, would you do it?" And I said, "Well, I don't know. It depends on what kind of part you're going to write. Why don't you just write it?" And then one season, he did. And I read it, and I thought, "Yeah, this is cool. I'd do this." And... I've never been comfortable with TV. And I don't really like... the pace is very fast. My television parts that I've done before I started doing movies, I never felt comfortable with the pace. Or the writing. And I always think that I kind of suck on TV. I mean, Clay Bicks is no exception. I think I kind of suck. And I don't know why that is, because on Hung, the pace is much more film-like, we shoot on film, and it feels like a movie, and I feel like I have all the time in the world to do the job I need to do. But network TV? I am just not cut out for network TV. It's just not in my blood. Show less «

(2012, on his 1998 DUI and quitting drinking) The DUI sort of marked the end for me. A buddy of mine had just died and I was actually driving home from his funeral. I had a couple of whiskeys in me and was pulled over four times that one night and let go every time except for the last one. Each time I got pulled over, I was driving faster than I was the previous time. The first time I got stopped, I was sleeping in my car. Not driving, just sleeping: passed out behind the wheel. Then I got pulled over for doing 100 miles per hour, then 120. The last time, I was doing 142...I had just lost the will to be a part of the planet. It was a tough time. My friend had died suddenly. It was late at night and it was a very nihilistic time. Getting woken up in a jail in Bakersfield to sign an autograph at four o'clock in the morning was when I said to myself, "This is not the way I want to live my life." Show less «

(2012, on quitting drinking) I've always had a love-hate relationship with alcohol and drugs: I love the freedom that they seem to afford you by breaking you out of your conventional thinking but they always lead you to the confining trap of being sort of-in one form or another or to one degree or another-addicted to the freedom that you feel drugs and alcohol are affording you. The truth is, it's not true freedom, so you're not truly enjoying God's gift of consciousness when you're fucked up on alcohol or drugs. Show less «