The concept of monogamy is an inheritance of a medieval time, when family would carry the tradition of the name and certain privileges. It’s a way of organizing society, perhaps.

You can’t be happy in a place like London when you don’t have money.

In general, I hate films that are overtly either very masculine or very feminine, you know? The same way that I don’t like a war movie about soldiers smashing people’s heads. But a chick flick I like would be Cassavetes’ movies. ‘A Woman Under the Influence,’ ‘Husbands.’

HeyHey is my favourite app. It’s like Instagram but for sound recordings, with little soundbites from people’s days. We spend far too much time looking down at our phones, so it’s nice to have your head up while you listen to what other people have uploaded.

I feel optimistic about how heterogeneous societies pull together. We just have to keep on with the struggle.

If anybody is interested in listening to good modern music, I would recommend Jim Fassett, ‘Symphony of the Birds.’ It’s really beautiful … with real birds.

Theatricality is a concept. It’s not a specific language.

In Mexico, audiences want to see a big discussion around a film – what we expect from Hollywood films worldwide is more of an entertaining show. ‘Y Tu Mama Tambien’ was a road movie and comedy, but it had a very strong political connotation that sparked a discussion in Mexico that is still going on.

I want to direct every now and then, but I don’t want to be a director.

I don’t know, a lot of people go crazy about ‘Breaking Bad,’ but I don’t like the soap opera aspect of it and only following one character. I like the context to all of it, all the pieces, like ‘The Wire.’ It’s more about the state of things; it’s not about the narrative of a person.

My mom had me when she was 19 or 20. And my father was 22 or something. They were working on whatever they could, both of them aiming to be actors in theater.

The type of music we know as classical music began with rich people hiring musicians or owning them in a way. Without funding, it’s very hard to have this experience. Be it state money or private money, there has to be someone dedicated to raising the money.

I’m addicted to avocados, and I’ll put them with anything, particularly chillies. Can you imagine if they became extinct? That would be like the apocalypse, no?

As actors, we don’t shy away from saying, ‘I wanted to be an actor because I wanted to meet girls.’ Directors cannot say the same thing.

The world of classical music is so fascinating. It’s a world that encompasses people from everywhere and erases the basic restraints of nationality; everyone is united by this common language of music.

My parents separated when I was very small. I grew up with my mother, and I was a single child then. She was very independent, doing her things and having fun alone and working.

I think the best thing I can say about it – and I think the best thing you can say about anything, really – is that ‘The Motorcycle Diaries’ made me feel like my home was bigger; it made me feel at home anywhere in Latin America.

People still say to me, ‘What, you still live in Mexico?’ I don’t have to go to the United States simply to find work, and I don’t have to stop what I’m doing. I mean, which Hollywood film beats ‘The Motorcycle Diaries?’

I would love to work with Martin Scorsese.

There’s no such thing as a specific authenticity to what Mexico is, because Mexico is incredibly complex and varied, and the food is completely different if you travel 50 kilometers. It just changes all the time.

Music is really nothing if you think about it – it only becomes something when somebody listens to it. And then it becomes uncontrollable.

Little remnants from everywhere I’ve been are scattered around my home. I collect rocks in a weird way, with stones from around the world as mementos. I’ve also got three haranas, which are little guitars.

‘Motorcycle Diaries’ had the best costumes – that battered jacket and those linen shirts. I wear linen shirts in real life, too, and I have a nice, simple number I got handed down. As a father, you just stop buying stuff for yourself. It’s all for the kids.

Everywhere in the world, we’re aware that democracy has incredible flaws and that the word has been used, especially in the United States, to wage wars.

Comedy requires a lot of energy.

In order to do ‘Amores Perros,’ I had to skip some time at drama school, so the director Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu came up with a great Latin American solution, which was to say I had a tropical disease and had to stay in Mexico for a while. Everyone believed me.

I grew up with a lot of exiles from Chile, Mexico, Argentina, Brazil, Peru, Colombia – I grew up with them, and I gained a family; I gained friends.

There is a discourse of hate.

This is what happens when somebody validates that conversation, that discourse, that’s how genocide begins, that’s how civil wars start, by validating that ignorant, repulsive, bigoted discourse.

If we do a little bit of insight into history, how many times have there been people doing hate discourse, blaming everything on a certain group of people. That really is the genesis of genocide, where it kind of sparks.

The whole Baja California peninsula is an energetic place, and it’s incredibly alive.

Migration is as natural as breathing, as eating, as sleeping. It is part of life, part of nature. So we have to find a way of establishing a proper kind of scenario for modern migration to exist. And when I say ‘we,’ I mean the world. We need to find ways of making that migration not forced.

Films, fiction, can encompass a whole global vision on a particular subject with any story, whatever it is. You can play the story in whatever country with whatever language in whatever style you want to tell the story in.

It’s not easy to act, but to direct to act. It goes form one place to the next. It’s not heading for the punchline, and also it’s not about scoring goals. It’s about passing the ball, and the goals will come by themselves.

In terms of work, obviously acting is such a job that is very in the flesh kind of thing. It’s your work, but it’s your life, in a way. You can get so mixed up.

Recently I’ve been doing risottos. Some of them have been amazing. Some of them, not all of them.

I was brought up the Mexican way, where actors are paid very little and every part you take is an act of faith. If people respect that, then great.

In English, I’m a little bit limited. I speak English as a second language, and that’s a little limitation that I have to work around and I have to use it to my favor. So, yes, that’s why I end up wanting to do more things in Latin America.

We all have a cross-gender character: Every woman has a man that they can play, and every man has a woman that they can play.

In a comedy, after the day is done, you can figure out ways of how to make it even funnier for the next day. In dramas, it’s very different – the mindset that you’re in.

Mexican food is far more varied than people think. It changes like dialects. I was brought up in Jalisco by the sea on a basic diet – tomatoes, chillis, peppers of every size and rice, which is a Mexican staple. The Pacific coast has a huge array of seafood.

In Mexico, theater is very underground, so if youre a theater actor its very difficult to make a living. But its also a very beautiful pathway to knowledge and to an open education.

In Mexico you have death very close. That’s true for all human beings because it’s a part of life, but in Mexico, death can be found in many things.

It’s very difficult to raise money, especially in the United States, for independent movies.

The collective experience of watching a great film together in a room is a transcendent moment that will never die.

Let’s not give the electoral process so much importance. We have to be cynical about it. Let’s give importance to the real democracy that’s constructed on a day-to-day basis. That’s my hopeful perspective on it.

I think the water dictates how food will taste in a country. In England the apples taste unlike apples grown in any other place. England is an island, there’s a lot of salt in the air and in the water. I think that has something to do with it.

I was asked to go to Cannes to present Amores Perros. And little did I know that this film would be huge. I saw it for the first time in Cannes, and it was the first time I’d seen myself on such a big screen. And it had a huge impact on me – it was the strangest feeling.

I think in a sense seeing how films have changed me and seeing how fiction moves me more than facts in many ways, and I think that I can talk for many people that fiction moves us more than real life, it certainly helps us to set forth on this a journey of a utopia, which can never be achieved.

When confronted with a clear definition of what it is to be Mexican, we encounter ourselves in a never ending allegory of mixes and chaos.

I always wanted to act, but I never thought it would be my profession. I thought that I’d end up doing other things, but that in the meantime I’d do plays.

Every democracy is constructed day-to-day. And the electoral process reduces and minimalizes every single aspect of human complexity. We’re putting it into pamphlets. We’re doing a publicity show. We’re becoming symbols.

Alexander Gonzalez Inarritu is a great director. He’s the one I first worked with. He’s amazing.

In Mexico we have a trick – add a crystal of salt to the kettle and the tea tastes better, almost English. But after four pots, your kettle’s broken.

When it’s good, cinema can be one of the most important things in a person’s life. A film can be a catalyst for change. You witness this and it is an incredibly spiritual experience that I’d never lived before; well, maybe only in a football match.

I always laugh a lot when I see the dramas that I end up doing. I see myself behaving very seriously and I’m like, ‘What is this?’

We have a documentary film festival in Mexico. It’s really original. It’s called Ambulante, and it’s a film festival that travels around several cities in Mexico.

A boxing workout is the heaviest thing, but it’s the best. The worst part is that boxing gyms are the smelliest things in the universe. You have to lie down on the floor, where everyone has been sweating and spitting, and do 1,000 situps and push-ups.

I was little there were times I wanted my parents to be normal. I wanted them to have a religion. I wanted them to have a job, like the parents of every other kid I went to school with.

Texas is a country in its own. It’s made up of half Mexico/half United States but completed mixed. I don’t mean to draw a generalization but it is a place, a territory, that’s really made up of all these encounters, you know?

I didn’t know I wanted to do films until I started to do them. Very few films are made in Mexico and film-making belonged to a very specific group, a clique.

I think since I was in drama school, I wanted to direct in the theatre. When you are an actor, you just have to open your eyes and you start to learn a lot about how to survive on set and what’s important and how to tell a story. Directing is really about putting yourself out there, to be slapped in a way. You know that in the kitchen, you’re gonna get burned. It’s very scary but very exciting as well. If you have something to say, you have nothing to lose and you probably learn from the experience.

My love is for acting not money, so I only take on roles that I find challenging, in stories I find interesting.

It’s difficult to act in a language that’s not your own. It takes a long time to put your head around it and feel confident with it.

Shamefully, Mexico isn’t a country that provides opportunities equally and democratically to everyone. Although there is a myth as well about that, because if you have something to tell, you will find a way to do it. You might get frustrated doing it but hey, that’s the country we live in. I want the chance to live and experience the country that I come from. I keep struggling and fighting against these very seductive offers that require that I live somewhere else. It is a shame that it has to be like that. But you are young. If you don’t have a family then there’s no excuse. Try, at least.

I asked the producers when I was doing ‘Y Tu Mama Tambien’ if they could give me a VHS recording of the film that I could show to my family, because in Mexico and Latin America, when you do a film, you don’t expect anybody to see it, especially not in the cinema.

I want to do work, but I also want to have a good time.

Every decision that you make you have to be incredible congruent. It doesn’t mean that you have to starve. If you need money, you do something that gives you money, that’s normal.

I love rehearsals and I love creating a character, sticking with it until you have something to tell. It’s always different though. Sometimes a director will tell you from day one what they want. Then you throw in your idea.

Doing films in Latin America is like an act of faith. I mean, you really have to believe in what you’re doing because if not, you feel like it’s a waste of time because you might as well be doing something that at least pays you the rent.

In Latin America, you don’t do things for the money because there is no money.

I was pretty excited to meet Cate Blanchett. She’s great, she’s amazing, I think she’s one of the most beautiful women in the universe. And I mean the universe, not the world.

A love relationship has always been shaped by the context and times we live in.

Life certainly points it out to you – ‘you can go this way or the other way.’ You have to decide and it’s a very strong decision because, would you sleep well knowing that you’re living in the best place, but you’re letting the place where you should live alone?

Talking about food is like talking about your dreams. Everyone has something to say. We all have to eat, it’s just what we eat which differs. Some people eat for fuel and I feel bad for them.

Bringing a baby into the world is not like grilling enchiladas. It’s a difficult thing.

We think that democracy can change a lot of things, but we’re being fooled, because democracy is not the election. We’ve been taught that democracy is having elections. And it isn’t. Elections are the most horrendous aspect of democracy. It’s the most mundane, trivial, disappointing, dirty aspect.

I think we’re all political, in a way. What has happened recently in my case is that, fortunately, I’ve been able to get more in touch with the things I can change and do.

I believe fervently in the nature, in truth and imagination, I believe in the blood, in life, words, and motivations.

Histories are to educate, so that we understand better for ourselves and for motivation.

Talent survives and remains while beauty is diluted.

Democracy should be practiced not every six years, but every day.

It is quite common to meet people that live a few kilometers away from Mexico and that have never been there.

To be absolved, especially if you commit a crime, there is no absolution, you must pay. But for forgiveness, with God or nature, you have to accept what you’ve done.

You know, Motorcycle Diaries has no incredible stories, no sudden plot twists, it doesn’t play that way. It’s about recognizing that instance of change and embracing it.

A person isn’t born with the intelligence to be with someone especial, you learn it, and you fail in the path of life, but you don’t have to give up the chance to love.

I go with the flow. Whatever music you play for me, I’ll dance.