I had a really complicated relationship with acting for a long time.
Acting, for me, was therapeutic. It was a way of expressing yourself.
I wasn't perfect and didn't have it together. I felt alone. So through acting, I decided to be a shape shifter and with every role become the character instead of being myself. It meant about 10 years of no one knowing I was the same person in every movie.
I was always in trouble from an early age. I had a fraught relationship with my parents, who were very traditional. Doing plays at school was a joyous release.
I've learned a lot with every character, everything from being a cop, to a lawyer to a tattoo artist. And underneath that stuff, I've been really able to find myself through the characters. It's served as a cheap form of emotional therapy.
The thing that attracted me to acting the most was I always felt quite unsure or insecure as a kid, and for some reason, when I got to perform these lines and characters, I felt safe. There was this confidence and excitement from performing that I loved.
I still think you shouldn't use acting as therapy.
For me, acting is like a therapy. I can express myself fully when I am acting and have blood in my veins. Even when I'm not working, I'm always living in my own world, imagining characters.
I guess we're all lucky to be in this profession where you can be someone else for two or three months on a film shoot. I find it restful. Vachement agreable.
It's been liberating to be able to play someone who's a bada– or promiscuous, because that's the opposite of who I am … It's like a drug.
When I was onstage doing the work, adrenaline killed the pain because I never hurt in front of an audience.
One of the things I love about acting is that it reveals a certain something about yourself, but it doesn't reveal your own personal story.
I've played a lot of bad guys, and I'm pretty good at leaving my work at the office. And I look at acting as having a certain sort of therapeutic nature to it.
I have been blessed with roles that allow me to express something very personal at a specific time in my life. I seek them out; acting is my therapy.
People think stars never have any problems or cares. That's bull. Why would we show any more than one mask to the public. There's a whole lotta things I've done that I don't want to think about. But I bring it all right out when I need it for a role.
I don't know if I ever realized, initially, that I didn't tic when I was so focused on my acting. I think it was after I had already done it a few years, when I went, 'Hey, interesting that this happens.'
I always felt like I needed to act. Not that I wanted to act, but I needed to. And I still feel that same way. There's an expression that I get to have in acting that I can't consciously express in my life. It has always defined me and it always will.
Me being able to trash hotel rooms on set means I don't do it in real life.
In a weird way, that's the beauty of being an actor. You get to live out things that you're afraid of, and you get to say, 'Well, maybe I can get to the end of it and survive it intact and I can be the hero of my own story.' It's kind of a way of exorcising fear.
I've always felt a spiritual connection with acting. And I felt whole when I was onstage.
I'm not a super emotional person, so that's one reason I love acting - it makes me deal with myself in that kind of way.
That's what I love about acting, you get to find little pieces of yourself in every character you play.
Acting has always been a way for me to express the emotions I had buried. If I hadn't acted, I would have gone insane. In my acting class, I could let out my real tears and everyone thought it was the character. But no, it was me.
I find it really difficult to even articulate things that I've done in the past. I express myself through the characters that I play, not through the articulation of them later.
You learn stuff from every character you play about the human condition that can be quite enlightening.
