What made you want to become an actor? Question from Amy Connelly.
It’s just purely fantasy with me. I’m an untrained actor. Everyone thinks I’m trained, and I’ve done all the Shakespeare and all that stuff, but I really just invented myself as an actor and that’s how I work.
I was reading an Al Pacino interview one day, and he said this thing and I thought, "how flippant is that." He said, "Well, either the muse kicks in or it doesn’t." I was quite a bit younger and not as wise, and eager for it to be this big philosophical thing. It’s not. It’s in you, it’s actually in you, and you just have to let it come out. And that’s fine.
I’m a believer that as an actor, my job, my pure job, is to create interest. All the other [skills], I mean, [without them] I wouldn’t get the job. It’s like a carpenter’s job isn’t to bang nails in, [but] if you can’t bang the nails in you wouldn’t be a carpenter. My job is to create interest, and the best way to create interest is to be interested in others. Because as a viewer you’re going, "what’s he got going on?"
[It’s not] the attention’s on me. The attention’s actually on the other person in the scene. [That] drags the lens to you. A little acting trick, that one. In life it’s a lot like that. In life we’re interested in the other person. That’s what you do when you’re talking to someone. You’re not going, "how am I going to say the next line." Obviously if you’re in a business meeting with someone you might have that going on.
An actor’s job is to create interest, so the audience goes with you. And the best way to create it is to be interested in someone else.
