Only a fool does not fear actors, but you can't beat them, and if you can't beat them, join them, as they say. As I've got older I've become very interested in that part of the work.
Quite frankly, I didn't become an actor to become a movie star. I have never dreamed about being the most famous person on the planet. I just want to do really good work.
It turns out that I've become a pretty good werewolf actor. I'm going to have to try to get myself into a different position, at some point in the future, but I'll take werewolf. Werewolf is pretty damn fun to play.
I try not to live in the future too much; that can make you crazy as an actor. There are so many people who are obsessed about their career path, like it's something which you can control, which fundamentally you can't.
I want to be a little more dramatic nowadays. I definitely want something big and funny, but I look for things that can just have people see me in a different light and let me mature as both an entertainer and an actor and a comedian.
Jonathan Lynn is one of the last actors Orsen Welles used in a production. It was wonderful. He's very sharp, very sharp. It's funny I've been asked how weird it was to have a Brit do a church gospel movie.
I'm known as a kind of dramatic, serious, almost humorless actor and the fact is, I'm a funny guy, and I spend most of my life trying to find a lighter side of things, and on stage was given plenty of opportunity to do that.
I got to draw monsters, robots and write funny stories. I loved doing that stuff and working with the actors. But it got to be less and less that stuff and more about trying to be everywhere and not being able to do one thing very enjoyably.
It's funny in the U.K., where I'm not really known because I never did a soap. My English cousins in the Lake District think I'm not a real actor because they've never seen me in 'Home and Away' or 'Neighbours.'
I always find it funny when I watch actors talking about, 'I chose to do this part.' A lot of times it's 'you're lucky to get the job.' We're like, 'Thank you so much.'
It's funny, because I was trained as a dramatic actor at New York's Colonnades Theater Lab in the '70s, along with Jeff Goldblum, Danny DeVito and Rhea Perlman. People I worked with there saw a comedian in me. I'm still most at home in comedy.
It's funny what actors take issue with. Some won't do parts where animals are in jeopardy; some won't ever play anyone remotely unlikable - 'Heroes only, please.' Some won't do violence. I have no such qualms.
I was an assistant director for a year, and I realized, 'God, this is a lot of hard work. This is going to take time. So what's the shortcut? What's the better option?' Then thankfully, someone said, 'Why don't you become an actor?'
I've always slightly envied other actors I know who have different reputations. I think, 'God, you don't get people coming up to you, going, 'Hey!' - because they're scared of you.'
But some actors I have met possess an intelligence that I can only dream of. It's about character, it's about behavior. They understand things about people that I simply don't see.
I never said that I wanted to be an actor when I was a kid. I didn't know. I thought I was going to be a singer and musician. That's what I had been doing, for a huge part of my life.
I love the theatre. It's a perfect life for an actor: you can do a couple of movies and then go and do a play, and then go back and do another movie. It's a nice way to live your life.
As an actor, I think it's always important to separate yourself from your characters because, when you include yourself in a character, you're taking a liberty that you don't really have unless you're life is that incredibly close to the character.
When I was in theater I was forever trying to inhabit a space which puts yourself under the microscope as an actor and your personality and your take on life, but actually through another portal of a character.
I'm still an athlete, I'm still a stockbroker, I'm still an actor. I think of it as more of an opening of new doors than an actual transition. I enjoy all of those things, which is why they remain a part of my life.
I think you choose how you walk through this life. I think if you choose to participate in a paradigm that is looks-based, if you're an actor, then it can be empowering in some ways, and it can be really limiting in some ways in terms of time and lon...
