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.
That hunger of the flesh, that longing for ease, that terror of incarceration, that insistence on tribal honour being obeyed: all of that exists, and it exists everywhere.
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.
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 think that you can fall into bad habits with comedy… It’s a tightrope to stay true to the character, true to the irony, and allow the irony to happen.
I didn’t go to drama school because, from the first refusal I then, as I said, a couple of weeks later, was offered a professional job, where I am immensely grateful to the journey.
If the director wishes to print it, then you have a series of choices, maybe millions of choices within that minute-and-a-half, or 80 seconds, or 2 minutes or however long or short the take is, you have all those choices committed to celluloid. I find that absolutely thrilling.
