Alden Ehrenreich

The biggest challenge to being an actor is, when you're not working, just being unemployed: the downtime and not having anything to do.

I've had that experience many, many, times - when you don't get roles. I'd developed a good muscle for shaking it off. I buy myself a present whenever I don't get a role that I really wanted. You get bummed out, and then you go, 'Oh! Now I get to go buy a present for myself.' That kind of helps.

My parents weren't involved in show business, but my parents would show me. We'd watch old films in the house. Little film festivals of Westerns and stuff like that when I was a kid. I knew I wanted to be those guys in those movies before I knew what being an actor was.

I remember when I was 13 and telling people I wanted to be an actor, and being met with, 'Have fun waiting tables,' so I figured maybe that's not such a great idea after all.

It's appealing to me to get to be in a commercial film without feeling like I sold out.

I'm glad that I had the upbringing I did where I was just part of what everyone else was a part of. And prom and all that.

I think now I'm more realistic, but I'm still very much an idealist.

It's not hard for me to access a bad actor. That's always there. It's actually kind of a load off your mind because, the worse you do, the better it goes.

I haven't worked enough to worry about getting typecast, but I do as a film lover didn't want to be working with the bad guys. I didn't want to be making a movie I thought was contributing to a lower base of movies that I just didn't think were helping people, really.

Some movies, I think, present ideas of the world that just don't help people with their lives. They just present things that are fleeting or stupid. So that's what I'm careful about - making sure I'm part of something that is saying something that I think is valuable in the world of people, not necessarily in the world of art.

I really don't know what it's like in 'Twilight,' but I know in the young-adult genre, there are these cold, aloof guys. If you start thinking that's the ideal guy when you're 13, by the time you're 25, you're going to have had some seriously bad relationships.

My favorite one... it's hard to pick a favorite. But the one I really love a lot is 'A Serious Man.' I just love, love 'A Serious Man.'