Exotica won't alter my career at all, but I think it will alter people's perceptions of me....I don't think people thought I could actually do this.
Toronto Globe and Mail 12/9/94

I wanted to do something that would resonate longer. With Atom's work I realised that the closer you look, the more there is to discover.
Lumiere Cinemas, Exotica Production Notes

The men I have played [in Canadian movies] are incredibly strong. If you look at The Sweet Hereafter or Exotica, the characters are in so much pain - but they move through it because they are strong. They are not denying their feelings. They adapt [with] some strange coping mechanisms, but they are strong enough to feel ... and I think that's psychically far more healthy than picking up a gun and blowing someone away. Don't you?
Weird Sex and Snowshoes 2001

Question: What do you feel has been the highlight of your career thus far?
Answer: Last year's movie, Exotica.
Smoke 2/96

And, of course, I'm proudest of the movie Exotica, which I made for director Atom Egoyan.
Toronto Star 7/22/97

on Francis Brown:

[Francis] has had his ideal for love and of family removed forcibly from him. Francis has wandered into an abyss, prompted by the betrayals he has endured which have taken away his equipment to deal with reality, so he creates his own reality.
Lumiere Cinemas - Exotica Production Notes

Either I follow my sexual inclinations, go to her as Christina, and I give up my daughter. Or I don't and I keep my daughter. But keeping my daughter keeps me in the past, keeps me from living life; it keeps me living a fantasy. That's the real battle Francis must wage within himself.
CBC Movies Homepage

On working with Egoyan:

Atom has very strong ideas. He has a deeper sensibility about his characters, he's much more connected to them than any director I've worked with before.
Angelika Filmbill 2/95

It was an emotional watershed to do Atom's movie.
Toronto Star 12/9/94

I really had to let myself do what he asked me rather than ask what his next thought was, because his methods change from day to day.
Halifax Daily News 5/16/94

on how the filming affected him:

It was a harsh journey, totally unlike anything I'd played before, I'd seen or done before. I experienced so much I didn't intend to, waiting for that pain to come, looking at relationships in my life carefully and honestly. I summoned up relationships in my life more than I usually do.
Toronto Star 12/9/94

I was very sad during that movie. [My character] was so sick with grief. It really loaded me up with a lot of sadness. I sort of played against that between takes by being my regular, doltish, goofish self, but I didn't realize until the movie was over how much [sadness] I really was carrying. I mean when the movie was over I didn't shake it off, although on the last day [of shooting] I shaved off my beard which made a huge difference. We had to shoot those scenes that happened earlier [in the film] on the last day when [my character] had no beard. When I shaved it off, about half of the ton that was on my shoulders came off and then it took a couple of weeks of shaking off the sadness.
Los Angeles Times 10/15/95

My wife told me later I was completely different for about six weeks.
Calgary Herald 10/21/99

on the Cannes Film Festival:

Cannes was incredible, starlets stripping by the pool, being chased by paparazzi. One came up to me and asked, "Can I take your peak-ture?" I thought, "Wow, I've only been here for six hours and they want to take my picture." So he takes my picture and says, "Can you sign this?" I figured it was Polaroid. But he whips out an 8 by 10 of Dennis Quaid. "It's not me," I protested. "Sure eet ees. Eet ees you," he kept insisting. So I signed it "Dennis Quaid." I didn't want to disappoint him.
Toronto Star 12/9/94

There was this guy who came up to me in Cannes. We were just standing around at one of those sardine-line parties and...he asked, "Are you involved in the film in any way?" and I said, "Yeah, I'm one of the actors," and he goes, "Yeah. You were that guy at the end, right?" and I said, "Yeah, well, I was also in the rest of it" and he goes, "Look pal, I'm a plastic surgeon. I make my living evaluating people's faces. That guy was 50 years old." I just went, "Okay, I guess it wasn't me."
Toronto Globe and Mail 12/9/94

on his Genie nomination:

I think the most salient thing for me was that throughout the evening people kept coming up to me to thank me for what I did with Francis [his role in Exotica]. And that felt gratifying. But also I got to meet a lot of people I had only seen on screen, or had just heard about, and that made me feel that finally I am a part of a community to which I thought I never belonged. So at least people will now know who I am.
The Globe and Mail 12/9/94