Music is extremely intuitive, which acting too in a different way.
I've never been to acting classes or anything like that. Everything I do is quite instinctual.
In any sport, you're at your best when you're playing without thinking too much.
Thinking about what songs are coming next instead of just relaxing, breathing and playing from my heart. Sometimes it can get to be almost like the enemy.
I don't have a process; I just feel it. My book on acting would be very short.
In a way, I don't create anything; I just open myself to the character, and the character takes over. Of course, I'm aware of it, and I'm driving it, but I don't try to control it. If I try to control it, it goes wrong.
Sometimes, I know it's not me that makes this music. Like, when the Based God comes, he speaks to me. It's not me, even though I'm there playing the music live, myself.
I'm not an amazingly trained soul singer, so with me it's about feeling and energy and spontaneity - that's a really big part of who I am.
I think there's a quality of passion to the American actor. I'm certainly attracted to it, and I like to hope that underscoring it is a characteristic of my work. That quality is certainly also present in some British actors, but I tend to feel the mechanical and intellectual process is dominant in the British.
In the moment of acting you don't feel like anything, you feel like the person, as much as you can.
When I'm singing I try not be a singer with a capital S. I just try to get it out so I feel comfortable with it.
There's a lot of romanticisation of the intuitive actor and method acting and all kinds of notions about getting inside a character and coming out from there.
That raw connection between the two performers is something you can't fully plan. You just go with it and get lost in that moment and feed off of each other.
The thing a drama school can't give you is instinct. It can sharpen instinct but that can't be taught, and you have to have intuition. It's an essential ingredient.
A lot of the stuff you do as an actor - or I do, because I can't speak for everyone - is not always consciously thought out. A lot of the time, for me, it's actually just feeling stuff, and it happens all in the moment and your body reacts.
Improvisation is really not so much remembering things. And this is what I do when I play. I forget things. When I go on the stage, I want my mind to be a blank, so that I can - things can come into me without my knowing where they came from.
When the writing is good and it suits your character, you don't have to memorize anything, because it just makes sense. You read it and you go, "Oh, that makes sense." And it's easy.
I'm kinda a first take dude. The first time, cut that mic on, and the spirit is there, and what comes on the mic - I mean, even if I'm mumbling, I like to keep a lot of that initial thing that comes out. Cause that's the spirit.
I want a performance style that's more cerebral and emotional than physical. I want to be a creative artist, not a whirling dervish.
I can get onstage and cut that off and be superinstinctive. To be a good live performer, you have to be instinctive. It's like, to walk in the jungle, or to do anything where there's a certain tightrope wire aspect you need to be instinctive. And you have to be comfortable at it also.
Often, equipment can as easily function as a security blanket for musicians unwilling or unable to risk anything personal in the studio. Whether one catches the feeling on a record is a subjective matter. How can you be sure? The machinery can hold out the promise of at least mechanical perfection.
I don't really have a method or a technical process. I studied [Sanford] Meisner, and that's the thing that really works for me. That sort of instinctual, in the moment, what the other actors do, working off them and letting the story unfold, as opposed to having an idea of what the story should be.
I'm an instinctive actor. I just see the part and play it. I'm more interested in what isn't said - the silences.
The Method helps actors connect in a way that is deeper and more real. So they use themselves instead of playing an idea of the character. It's more emotionally true when it comes from them.
So I had to just kind of go back to the hotel, take a shower, sit quiet, dig down deep, warm up, and allow myself to move into some kind of zone. And then I remembered that a lot of my favorite musical moments are not about perfection.
