In order to inhabit a villain, you mustn’t care what the audience think of you. That’s not why you are there. You mustn’t care for a second whether the audience likes you or dislikes you. Your villain has to be way beyond that.
I don’t want to be like the actor who rehearses everything in the bathroom, then comes to the set and carries on completely uninterrupted while the other actors tiptoe away.
Hopefully, as I get older in the business, I make my choices more accurately, and I perhaps know from either the script or the first meeting that it isn’t going to work.
If you are a libertine, if you’re not given to long-term faithful relationships, you tend to project your behavior onto everyone else. It’s like the person who knows they’re not trustworthy; they tend to mistrust everyone else.
One of the greatest things drama can do, at it’s best, is to redefine the words we use every day such as love, home, family, loyalty and envy. Tragedy need not be a downer.
You don’t go to a town to present the play and have applause at the end of it, but that’s benign conquest. It’s a glorious way of exploring other landscapes and other cultures in a very life-affirming way.
When I choose a role it’s either because I recognise the man, or that I’m very curious to know him. If I neither recognise nor know him, then it is better that I don’t play him.
