With his career newly revived following an Oscar nomination for Crash and a star turn in You, Me and Dupree, Dillon tells Parade magazine he's found the courage to open up to the kind of change – personal and professional – he once feared.
"I'm open to life now, even to marriage," he tells the magazine. "I'm open to the idea that things will work out. I absolutely value change now. I don't fear it. I accept it."
Dillon, 42, calls the last several years of his life a "rebirth." "Ultimately, I had to find my place in the world again, and I had to do it by myself," says the actor, who'd fallen into a professional slump before Crash.
"I was dissatisfied with where I was as a man, with my relationships, with my career," he says. "I thought my career was who I was. It wasn't until later that I discovered I was more than that."
Of his personal life, Dillon reveals that the one time he fell in love – with former girlfriend Cameron Diaz – changed his life.
"It's a very powerful thing when you feel that way about somebody," Dillon says. "Cameron was a muse for me."
Now, Dillon says he's got a new outlook. "When I look at what has happened to me in the last few years I have a kind of guarded optimism. And that's what faith is, isn't it? You don't shut the door on hope."
