Anson Mount's Quotes

I think the American Western laid down a kind of subject matter that's about following your instinct or following your gut and having a sort of removed quality from your humanity. And I think Clint Eastwood helped to establish that.

When you're in school until you're 25 and you get out and suddenly structure is not handed to you, if you're smart you realize that you need to create structure for yourself.

About once a year, I do these long-distance relays with some friends of mine, and it takes about 27 or 28 hours to complete it.

For me, acting is play. It's just play and it's playing make believe really, really well.

Good and bad are really arbitrary words when it comes to character.

I can't claim I'm truly a man's man, I'm just as much of a dork and a crybaby sometimes as anybody else.

I don't care about sympathy. I care about playing a character who's understandable and clear.

I don't go to movies for redemption - if I want that, I'll go to church!

I don't know how to put on any tough guy pretensions.

I grew up in a place where a lot of my friends had horses, so I grew up riding. But I'm not an expert.

I grew up in the South, so a huge part of our American History education revolved around the Civil War.

I like being able to be a man.

I like my work to stand on its own as much as possible.

I like science fiction. I took all the accelerated classes in school. I'm kind of a dork.

I love getting paid to ride a horse.

I love the long-form format of television. I love being able to develop a character, over a long period of time.

I think all of us have a hero and a villain in us.

I'm a goofball.

I'm an enemy of exposition. I feel there's no need to overstate.

I'm not interested in the heroes or the villains. I'm interested in playing people.

In the last two or three decades, there's been a feminization of the man in popular media that I've never really understood.

It's really rare that you come across a Southern character that's not stereotyped, vilified or aggrandized.

Life fundamentally does not change depending on work or fame or success.

The whole cable-TV original programming just changed the nature of television.

You don't need to like your protagonists.

I have a great-great-great-grandfather who was a Confederate cavalry colonel, and I still have his military composite photo on my wall. The chemicals in the photo tint have changed over the years to the point that he looks green. One of my family members apparently still has the piece of paper that listed every thing in his pocket when he got shot.