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A lot of child actors keep acting for the wrong reasons.

Acting is a tough industry. There are a lot of kids out there at drama schools and not a lot of money about, especially as the arts are being cut.

Acting for kids is like playing house, you know? But growing up in Hollywood, it just made it seem possible.

I've been really lucky when it comes to casting kids, and I don't particularly like child actors. Too often, they just show up, and they've had whatever real innocence that's in a child just beaten out of them. They start to perform for you, and you can just see it coming. It's no good.

Actors are the best and the worst of people. They're like kids. When they're good, they're very very good. When they're bad they're very very naughty.

When child actors act well they're just reacting to situations, and they're acting very real because their life experience is so short; there's no history to fall back on.

After all these years in the business, I really feel that actors are used. People treat actors worse than they treat children. It's always, 'Do me a favor,' it's always, 'Help me out,' it's always, 'You carry the load,' and then they don't want to admit what you've done.

As we mature and grow older we collect a lot of baggage, and a lot of that stuff you collect on life's journey gets in the way of acting. My kids can imagine a character and transform in the blink of an eye. It's so simple for kids, so complex for adults.

Acting is a hard way to make a living, and there's a kind of dark, somewhat seedy side to the whole aspect of fame and celebrity that's not really something I would want for my child - or want him to want, if that makes any sense.

Everyone brings their own particular skill set to the job, and acting training can work for a lot of actors, and it can't. I've seen a lot of really good actors go into acting schools and then come out a little bit corrupted.