There's a lot of guys that just get comfortable with their positions and rest on their laurels. I had to earn my way.
I surf; I skateboard. I'm from Southern California. I never thought I was going to be an actor. And to be honest with you, I never really thought of myself as one.
I just turned 40, and it's weird to think that I've been doing this almost my whole life. I was a child actor and then didn't do it through junior high and high school, then started up again in my late teens doing 'Young and the Restless.' Dabbled with school, went back to college, played around. I think I was doing Pleasantville at 23.
Basically, you're selling a world as an actor, right? I mean it's like any sales person: if you believe in your product, you know your product, you sell it a lot better.
I almost sabotaged my career. 'The Fast and the Furious' didn't let me, and I'm grateful now. That franchise gave me the opportunity.
The people I don't understand are atheists. I go surfing and snowboarding, and I'm always around nature. I look at everything and think, 'Who couldn't believe there's a God? Is all this a mistake?' It just blows me away.
I thought I was a hippie, bro. I wore Birkenstocks every day. I went to a Christian high school, so I was pretty funky. The teachers didn't give me a hard time, though, even though I was totally way out of line in terms of my dress code.
My parents never looked at my acting as a career. They saw it as a way to help provide for the household.
I'd like to live on horseback and just be a cowboy.
My motto is, you have to get in a sport a day.
I sometimes struggle, because my job is like the antithesis of what surfing is all about. Surfing's simple. It's real.
My family's really close.
That's one thing about Hollywood. People don't always want what's real. People always want a little more. So for me, it's a compromise. Here you go, that hyper-reality.
I was definitely ahead of my friends. I was French-kissing girls way before anybody else was.
I'm not the least bit polished, I come from a blue collar background and I never thought I could feel comfortable around the English.
Surfing big waves is not an extreme sport to me. I fall off, tumble down, and come up. My heart's racing because I'm thinking I almost drowned, and I thank God I can breathe again, but I always think, 'What am I hitting?' Water.
Thing is, I went to a born-again Christian high school, was brought up in a traditional Mormon family where these ideas about parenting are of structure and sacrifice. To think outside of that idea of family and parenting that I've grown up with is tough but also very freeing.
What I've found recently is the heart, the soul, whatever you want to call it, it doesn't differentiate: If you really live the experience making a movie, it's the same as living it in real life, as crazy as it sounds.
Maybe this is just horrible bad, but I think I've had enough successes to where the journey is more important to me now. There's no guarantee, no matter what. We get one run in life.
I wanna work with good people. I don't want to work with screaming, yelling directors who've got daddy issues. I just don't want to deal with those guys.
