All the dialogue on tape, and we'd play the tape in performance. Then I thought it'd be interesting if the actor's repeated what they heard on the tape, but at a slower speed, so we'd get a web of language.
It makes me proud, and it makes me scared. More than anything, I want to be an actor and I want to keep working, and I think there's a danger in being perceived as a poster boy for something.
As actors, for the most part, there's that neuroses most of us possess where, in a day of watching, this character get killed off of this show, and that character get killed off of that show - one never knows.
The reason I'm an actor and am trying to make my way in drama is to move people, to affect people, to gain a response - so these people who come up to you in the street are your audience.
There are a lot of actors who will watch the monitors. They'll do a scene, and then the director will look back to see if he got whatever he wanted. I just find it odd to sit there and watch yourself.
I think I'm a better collaborator, in seeing the bigger picture and trying to just help that, and not be so self-centered in whatever my task is, which is being an actor.
With writing fiction, I'm either not courageous enough or just not suited for telling truths in a more conventional way. As an actor, I inhabit those characters as I'm writing them.
I've spent my entire career on horseback or on a motorcycle. It boxes you in, the way people perceive you. I read a lot of scripts. Most of 'em go to other actors.
I no longer believe that William Shakespeare the actor from Stratford was the author of the works that have been ascribed to him.
So many of these comics are just frustrated singers or actors - they want to get a gig doing a sitcom. It's paint-by-the-numbers comedy, lame joke-telling. They're drawn to it as a career move.
The more projects you do, the more actors you meet, the more people you meet, it's harder and harder to give your heart and your complete attention or absolute sincerity to that person.
I've produced before, and sometimes it's by default. In the indie level, you can't just come to set and be like, 'Oh, I'm an actor.' You have to be willing to help out, make the project happen.
I felt sometimes too responsible as an actor because people promote violence or weird things that I don't want to be part of.
I learnt a lot about how to negotiate the camera: everyone had told me an actor doesn't really need to do anything on screen, but I realised that wasn't true. If you do nothing, it's boring.
I don't recall making a conscious decision to become an actor. I just remember winning a prize at a theatre festival when I was 17 and saying: 'Oh, that's what I have to do.'
I expect I should be more calloused by now, but I am so sensitive about not ever living up to anybody's worst idea about an actor who is well-known.
Craft comes into acting later rather than sooner. I was somebody who had to learn through a process - a natural actor doesn't need to.
I'm not entirely comfortable saying I'm an actor, because it seems like a very weird, almost dorky thing to say you are.
I got to New York when I was eighteen. I was knocking around, trying to be an actor, writer, musician, whatever happened.
We had a very energetic floor manager and he was always jumping around all over the place. The director would send down messages like, Can you tell that actor to calm down?
People are really emotionally affected by actors. And it's hard to know how to behave in a way that doesn't impose or withdraw. Because everybody wants your attention. Everywhere you go, you know?
