I’ve had the pleasure and the great luck to work with some incredible actors over the years and you have to observe and learn and take something from it and try and become better yourself.
And once you’re unafraid with death, I think your capacity for violence is immediately increased. Once you’re unafraid of death, you are a very, very dangerous adversary.
I’ve always felt kind of safe on stage, protected. I’ve talked to other performers about this and they feel the same things, particularly in the live arena. I never get nervous going on stage to do a play. Doing film or television I’ll have more butterflies.
I think if you play characters, it’s very important not to ever tag them with any sort of disorder, or diagnose them, or whatever. You have to normalize the behavior to get inside the character.
I started off in theater; I did exclusively theater for four or five years. In the last few years, television has come along but I can still make film. I feel very privileged that I can move between them.
From a very young age I had an ambition to be a musician, and to do that professionally. That’s what I pursued until I was about 20, playing in bands that were taken pretty seriously at that stage.
It was very much about performances, the whole ensemble thing was just great – everybody working together. Sometimes it didn’t feel like a film set. It wasn’t technically driven, it was very, very enjoyable.
If you behave like a celebrity, then people will treat you like a celebrity, and if you don’t, they won’t. There’s not much to write about me in the tabloids.
You take the job very seriously and between action and cut, that’s where your focus should be. And then there’s a lot of levity in between and a lot of good fun.
