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I started a French degree at university, but packed it in when I realised I really wanted to be an actor.

I come from a family of actors. My grandfather was like a Laurence Olivier with the Comedie Francaise. Since I was four I went every week to the Comedie Francaise. My aunt and grandmother were there, but my grandfather was a big star.

The truth is I studied fine arts in Switzerland. I was just interested. I had no dream of being a movie star.

When I started acting, there were parts in English that I thought I just had to try it out and go to another country. I did a film in Ireland. It was my first film abroad.

When I arrived at Columbia, I gave up acting and became interested in all things French. French poetry, French history, French literature.

I suppose when I was a kid, and I went to movies, and later went to some plays on my own when I got a little older, in New Orleans, where I was living then, I zeroed in on the actor.

My friends in Australia, they grew up with me acting, so they're used to it.

You couldn't escape the literary atmosphere in our home. I grew up as a Britisher. I played a protagonist of every nationality in stage adaptations of Shakespeare and Brecht. I graduated from Yale. When I moved to the U.S., I realized with some amount of surprise that I was seen as an ethnic actor.

I grew up in the middle of dairy country in Wisconsin, about as far from any major metropolitan area as you can get. I always assumed I was going to be an actor. I don't know why. I didn't have any reason to think that. In fact, when I finally did try it, when I was in college, I was really bad at it and didn't enjoy it.