Paul Wesley

Paul: (On his character having some fun) I welcomed the darkness last season, but I'm looking forward to Stefan lightening up on occasion.

Paul: I love snowboarding. I love, love, love, it. It's one of my favorite things to do. I love to go a ski chalet with some friends and go snowboarding.

Paul: (On his vampire make-up) The make-up is really creepy. When they're done with it and I look in the mirror, I scare myself.

Paul: With each new character, I find something new about myself that I didn't know before.

Paul: (On his vampire character, Stefan Salvatore) I think Stefan went out and experienced every single possible life and in the end, with everything he learned, he came back to the root of it, which is that he wants to be a good man and he wants to find pure, real love. The rest of it doesn't matter.

Paul: I've been wearing my hair like this, ironically, my whole life. Even when I was 14, 15, 16 - my hair has always been, well, up.

Paul: As everybody knows, chicks dig the vampires.

Paul: Every role presents a new opportunity for me to do something different and to explore something different.

Paul: I'm a city boy, and I thrive off of culture. Something about being on the streets of Manhattan revives me, so walking around and not having anonymity and just being recognized, would really take away that experience of being in a city.

Paul: The same thing that makes me nervous, which is never knowing what will happen next. That's what I love about it. I never know what character I'm going to play next, I never know what location I'll be in next. With each new character, I find something new about myself that I didn't know before.

Paul: (on being compared to Robert Pattinson of "Twilight") It makes me so uncomfortable. Nine of 10 girls in this room would throw me under a bus to get to Edward Cullen.

Paul: (about his favorite memory of working on "Guiding Light") The whole thing was a giant favorite memory because I was in high school and all my buddies had all these crap jobs. I felt like I was in Big. I was going into the city all by myself. I had this cool, adult job, and I was getting paid. It was just so amazing being in New York. Also, I made a lot of really good friends.

Paul: (about gaining experience from his work on "Guiding Light") I got so lucky because I had just gotten into acting and I wasn't comfortable yet in front of the camera. I was exploring new territory and soaps are such amazing training. GL allowed me to be comfortable in front of the camera and really learn my lines. It prepared me for the future.

Paul: (recounting his days in high school) I had a lot of extracurricular activities and I had one girlfriend that I consistently dated throughout high school. So that was always good. I was acting. I started acting junior year so I was actually out of school a lot.

Paul: (about playing a shady character on "Smallville") I can't be biased toward my own character. As Paul the actor, Lucas is a good guy but I'd say that about any character I played that did something bad. There's always denial.

Paul: (on his parents' support of his acting career) They've been phenomenal supporters since day one. I went to college for a semester. They consistently preached, 'You've gotta get good grades. You've gotta go to a good school.'

Paul: I wasn't some weird loner in school, but I definitely wasn't invited to any of the cool parties. Girls didn't like me that much--I didn't even go to my prom.

Paul: When I was courting my first girlfriend, I was about 14 years old, and I sent a five-foot teddy bear to her house. It was so huge. But I had the wrong address and it was this whole mix-up. I wanted it to be this big surprise and they ended up calling her and saying, "We're trying to deliver this teddy bear and we don't know where it is." It was so embarrassing but she thought it was the most romantic thing ever because I was only 14 and what 14 year old does that?

Paul: I went to this private, all boys Catholic school and I got kicked out of there because I didn't jive well with them. Then I went to a public high school and I didn't really jive there either. So then I went to another school and then I graduated. So I never really got to establish my clique.

Paul: (on changing his professional name from Wasilewski to Wesley) Wasilewski was too hard to pronounce! I asked my family's permission to change it, and it's really helped my career.