1.
Making a movie with Lindsay Lohan is not for the faint of heart.
Grant Bowler
2.
A long-running TV series is a beast in that it demands you stick to one character over a long haul.
Grant Bowler
3.
Strangely enough, I find myself more centered in chaos than in calm, and again I'm not sure whether that's a strength or says something weird about me, but I love a crisis. I'm normally very, very organized in the middle of chaos, and then when I have nothing to focus on, extremely disorganized, and I tend to waste a lot of time.
Grant Bowler
4.
Mind your own business.
Grant Bowler
5.
If we spent the majority of our focus just concentrating on our side of the street, not so much on what the next guy is doing, I think I'd get a lot more done - we'd all get a lot more done - and we'd probably have a lot less criticism for everybody else.
Grant Bowler
6.
I'm a person who doesn't necessarily enjoy feeling vulnerable, so I think my loved ones and my family make me feel vulnerable. Also, being connected with people when I'm working is a very vulnerable place to be.
Grant Bowler
7.
The process of acting, not necessarily the business of acting, but the actual doing of it in the moment is my greatest kind of personal passion, the thing that brings me alive the most. Also, my two children.
Grant Bowler
8.
I love motion capture. I think it's the best thing, ever. It's wonderful. It gives you an incredible freedom to just play things out.
Grant Bowler
9.
I love working in New Zealand. It's just the most beautiful country I've ever been to.
Grant Bowler
10.
I've actually usually been wary of taking on science fiction as an actor because it's really tough to do. It's really difficult to execute. There's often lots of prosthetics, green screen and special effects, and it can get very technical.
Grant Bowler
11.
Television is what we call the long form of storytelling, where we tell stories over thirteen, twenty-two, or twenty-four hours. Miniseries is an eight-hour form of storytelling, and film is a two-hour form. Each and every one of them are important to me, because they're a different modality of storytelling.
Grant Bowler
12.
For my money, if I'm playing anything then it has to have some sharp angles on it. It's got to have some edges that you can cut yourself on, otherwise it's boring.
Grant Bowler
13.
Comedy has to be so much cleaner than drama. You can't layer it in the way you can a dramatic performance. Which is why it's more difficult than drama - you don't have so many tricks.
Grant Bowler
14.
A character, their ability or inability to laugh at themselves should always be a very, very conscious choice. It's a very big key to the nature of a human being.
Grant Bowler
15.
I pretty much always choose characters. That's what I do. That's what I look for. I look for dynamics in a script and potential.
Grant Bowler
16.
I'm a huge fan of classic sci-fi.
Grant Bowler
17.
I was born in New Zealand, so I have a lot of family there.
Grant Bowler
18.
I think that the way of bringing realism into fantasy is to treat it as the commonplace.
Grant Bowler
19.
The funny thing is, the older I get, the less I enjoy talking when I act. I don't like talking anymore. I like behavior. All of the running and gunning, and the fights and the stunts, is just awesome fun.
Grant Bowler
20.
I seem to be incapable of playing that guy that always does the right thing, who always responds well in any circumstance.
Grant Bowler
21.
I never talk about a job before the contract is signed and I've shot the first three days.
Grant Bowler
22.
I love playing bad guys; they're always much more fun than the good guy.
Grant Bowler
23.
When I really get invested in something, the one thing that really disappoints me is when it breaks its own rules.
Grant Bowler
24.
I grew up in Queensland, and my dad was a tradesman and my mum an insurance agent, both self-employed.
Grant Bowler
25.
I don't watch the beginnings of many series, I don't know why, maybe because I'm normally working.
Grant Bowler
26.
I've been very fortunate in my career to work across a lot of different mediums. I've hosted, I've narrated, I've acted in television, miniseries, film - all of which are very, very different in the way they tell stories.
Grant Bowler
27.
Money is tighter now, with the advertising dollar spread a lot more thinly across a whole range of media because of the Internet. It means the television networks have less power to produce shows, and TV is where most Australian actors make their money.
Grant Bowler
28.
The truth that I know for sure is that I may have an opinion, but I do not know the truth, and the other thing I know for sure is that certainty is the root of all ignorance and the root of all evil.
Grant Bowler
29.
Looking back is a form of insanity, given that I could really never understand what everybody else was thinking. I find these days that I'm much more efficient when I just focus on what I need to do in order to move my family forward and get the focus off me.
Grant Bowler
30.
I think my children have presented one of the biggest lessons so far in my life. It was only when my kids were born that I realized just how much I'd been living my life worried about what everybody thought of me and, even more strangely, worried about what I imagined other people might be thinking about me.
Grant Bowler