It’s like a surfer taking off on a wave. Once you’re on it, you go with it – you don’t have time to think about it. You just keep going forward and enjoy what it is.

A lot of that became more potent for me when I was about to become a father myself. So that was the beginning of the saga and it took me to 30 to change back to Baker. It was really a process of letting go a lot of emotional baggage and guilt and all that sort of stuff and realising I am of my own self who I am. So it was going full circle.

Who you are, and the moments that you have just before you go to sleep-if you're at peace in those moments, then nothing else matters.

I dyed my hair for a project a year ago, and I reckon it was probably a mistake. It ended up orange and is only getting back to normal now. Really, I didn't even care when it was orange. It was my wife and friends who were like, 'Dude, you've got to fix that hair.'"
(December 2008)

But who doesn’t? Put the guy who says they don’t have any self-doubt in front of me, and I’ll make him cry in two minutes because they’re the ones who are more stuffed up than anyone.

They're the moments, the foundation I want my life to be built on, not the shifting sands of popular opinion or box-office receipts.

I'm someone who craves simplicity. I am a worrier, absolutely, but you always have to look for the simplicity. I remember someone who was going through real emotional turmoil saying to me, 'If you look at the sky, it's still there'. The simplicity of things like that are the things that keep me centred.

I think I probably am a bit of a mixed up mess of a man. But that's all right, I think if I was able to work everything out, then where is the mystery and challenge of life?

Between last year’s poster and the one which you now mention (the 2nd season campaign for The Mentalist), it appears as if several years have passed, but I wanted to have my say this time and appear as I am.

You know we were talking about being a country guy? A country guy is someone who’s interested in people. And I’m interested in people, their stories, in what they do and how they live. I feel an obligation to all different kinds of people, to humanity, in what I do.

I was like, you don't understand. There's no rejection of my Australian-ness. That's something you'd have to beat out of me with a stick.

Both characters were pretty complex, but with The Guardian there wasn’t the humorous element to the show, although I tried and a lot of the time it was quashed.

I guess The Guardian was more draining because it was more monotonous in a sense for the character. Whereas The Mentalist is a more faceted character, there’s a lot more different directions that I can take the character and play around with, in any scene or moment or situation, which keeps it refreshing and keeps me challenged to come up with different ways to play different beats within a scene.

Watching my kids laugh is the main thing, when they get along together and crack eachother up, that’s like hard drugs, an enormous high.

I like good wine with friends. I like travelling. I like very simple things, I’m a sensationalist, I like sensations – like the idea of diving into the ocean and letting the salt dry on my skin in the sun gives me enormous pleasure. Very simple things like watching the sun set or watching a storm come in.

To me the only real part is the experience of making it – the rest of it is someone else’s experience. Often in Hollywood it’s the cart that’s influencing the horse. I’d rather concentrate on being the horse.