Edward Norton doesn't want his life to be spent "playing pretend"

Edward admitted making a film is no longer a "novel" experience to him and he prefers to be out living his life, though the appeal of a good script will always pull him in.

He said: "I can exercise the acting impulse at the highest level with a lot of the best people when I want to. But I've got a rich life beyond that too...

"I love the work when it's good. When something like 'Birdman' comes along, I'm on MDMA creatively.

"But the experience of doing these things is not novel anymore. It's also just not real life.

"I don't want to look back on my life and see the large majority of it coloured with me playing pretend instead of actually doing things."

And the 50-year-old star - who has six-year-old son Atlas with his wife, producer Shauna Robertson - admitted he thinks actors can become "their own pollution" when they work too much and taking on fewer projects leads to a more powerful performance.

He added in an interview with the New York Times newspaper: "That's not to pooh-pooh the work or knock anybody else, but I don't think that actors are better for working more. If you take a Daniel Day-Lewis or Sean Penn, the fact that you see them a lot less means that when they return there's a potency to their acting.

"There's a point at which any actor starts to become their own pollution."