Jason Clarke Says He’d Quit Acting If His Wife Ever Asked Him (Exclusive)

For Jason Clarke, it’ll always be family first.

The actor, 56, tells PEOPLE that if his wife, Cécile Breccia, woke up “one day” and asked him to quit working, he’d “be happy to do it.”

“I really would,” he says. “I’ve got no complaints with what I’ve done. It’s important for my family to be happy. I love them a lot.”

When Clarke — who currently stars in the Hulu true-crime series Murdaugh: Death in the Family, as convicted murderer Alex Murdaugh — takes on projects now, he says it’s a “lot of figuring out the logistics” with Breccia and their two sons.

“You can’t do it without a partner like I have,” he says. “We live a good life. We enjoy our travel together. Who knows where we’re going to be at some point, really.”

Before signing on to a job, Clarke says he also asks himself, “Do I have the energy to do that now?”

“The 25-year-old in me goes, ‘Man I want to go and do it,’ ” he says with a laugh. “Then, I think, ‘I’ve got two kids in school.’ There’s all this give and take, and then, boom, you’re lucky enough to work with someone like Kathryn Bigelow in A House of Dynamite.”

Clarke admits “sometimes I get a little concerned [about] the boys” because of his changing schedule. “Then, someone will say, ‘Oh, the boys love to travel. Get out there. Take them with you,’ ” he says.

The actor explains, “I want to be a great father, whatever that entails, and that is a lot of up and down. I can show them the way, I can teach them things and all that, but I want to make sure that they feel like their life is their own, like mine was for me. That’s what my parents gave me.”

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He says he’d love to take his boys one day to his hometown in Winton, Queensland, to see “where I was born and where my father sheared sheep.”

“Their reality will be different to mine,” he says. “I always wanted to travel. I always knew that. [Now] I’ve traveled a lot of the world, and I’ve been living in this country for a long time and I love it. It comes down to your choices.”

Next year, the actor will head to India to shoot a project. “The world’s still an amazing place to me,” Clarke says.