As far as acting, I just went in and just started training. It was the first thing I did right when I retired. I just went in and found class, and found people, found the right coaches that could sort of just train me along.
As an actress, I never went to film school, and I think if I had gone to film school, I would have started with a great advantage. If you have a strong intent to do anything in life, you can do it, but it always helps to have formal training.
It all started with the most basic level of Uta Hagen, right at the beginning. I'm like, 'Really? I came to grad school; I'm going to do the 'Respect for Acting'?' And I realized the importance of that, because it was really to just get you to get rid of everything. Get rid of everything you've learned and just start from the bottom up.
I went to drama college in England - the Central School of Speech and Drama, in London. I was there for not quite two years, then I got Star Wars.
I was a guy who needed to go to class, because I had some raw talent that I thought was identifiable, when I finally made a decision to be an actor. And yet I wanted to learn how to really do the stuff. You know, 'How do I get to be a serious actor?'
When I started as a child actor, my father didn't tell me anything.
People keep asking me where I learnt acting. And I say that there is no special school for acting or drama where you can go and learn.
Every actor you learn from, take something from everyone - big actor or not. Whether they're big movie stars or not doesn't really matter.
I didn't start drama school until I was 20, and I don't think I would have gotten nearly as much out of it had I gone when I was 18. I didn't show up there to please anyone. After I was accepted, I wrote, 'The Audition's Over' and put it on the door of my dorm.
If I had a child, I wouldn't let them go to drama school. At times, I was really unhappy there.
I started to respect older actors when I was young and then contemporary actors later on. Then I learned respect for comedy. When I was first doing theatre, I thought of it as just a means to become Sarah Bernhardt or someone like that. But acting with young people has been a great learning experience.
I find acting conservatories really important. I've gone to four different ones, and all of them provided totally different tools for me.
'Friday Night Lights' was kind of like my college years because I did four seasons of that. It was my first series. It was the most time I had with one character, and kind of growing and evolving with the character over that long of a span of time, it just allows you to sort of learn in a completely different way that I had never experienced.
A lot of actors know they want to be actors a little bit earlier on. I didn't even really start studying until I was about 22.
I got into modeling first, then acting came along pretty soon, and I landed my first role in a Korean drama without education, without any acting experience whatsoever.
I don't think RADA wanted me, actually. When I was at Oxford I had a boyfriend at Central [School of Speech and Drama] and it looked like the most fantastic life, but I think not going makes you more free. Nothing can teach you what it's like to work on a film set, and the best education there can be for an actor is to walk up the street and observe human nature.
I went to a masterclass with Jonathan Pryce who said that a successful actor is not a famous actor, it's an actor who acts. And I have been incredibly fortunate to have worked constantly from the moment I left drama school, so I achieved what I set out to do. I am an actor.
Music is definitely something that I'd like to pursue. It's probably, I mean, the acting and music are the two biggest things in my life.
I've taken [acting] class with Larry Moss, who's more kind of in the theater world, so he's really educated me about playwrights.
I remember, when I started acting officially, I was unbelievably green. My first audition tapes were just horrendous.
I grew as an actor just by watching Kamal Haasan acting. I had the good fortune of being able to observe Kamal Haasan from close quarters.
With directors, some have a kind of in-built ability to just know how to work with actors and get the best out of actors, and some don't have a clue about acting. I think it'd be a good idea if directors put themselves in front of the camera, or even went on a six-week drama course, just to know a little bit about what that feels like.
And my father, being a good Swiss puritan, always really insisted that if I was going to be an actor, I shouldn't just be an actor, I should know about the whole process.
If I wasn't acting, I'd be teaching acting. That would be my easiest thing to fall back on is teaching it.
I think I might have been a more interesting actor, had more of a career earlier on, if I had more formal preparation. When I see something ten years later that I was in I think, 'Boy, would I love to do that over.'
