When you first get out of doing a show for a long time where you played a teenager, casting directors and producers all still look at you as being the character that you played for so long.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
If you're doing television, you get to be a character for a long time, and the cast around you becomes like family. You get attached to playing that one character, and it's hard leaving them behind.
Especially when you play a character for so many years, the character ends up reflecting a lot of who you are and I think I've changed a lot since then, but that represented a lot of who I was as a teenager.
A film has a beginning, middle, and an end. There is a certain amount of time that you have to embody these people. You know the entire story arch. But on TV, you have to let your guard down. You don't know how long the show is going to last. There is this excitement that comes with developing a character long-term.
As you're growing up, it's odd, because directors don't expect you to grow up. They think you'll be young forever, but as an actor, there is an awkward period when you're too young for old or too old for young, and it can be an odd time.
Walking into a show when I was 16, at that time when it was the No. 1 hit show, and replacing a character comes with so many expectations. I felt a lot of pressure with that.
As we mature and grow older we collect a lot of baggage, and a lot of that stuff you collect on life's journey gets in the way of acting. My kids can imagine a character and transform in the blink of an eye. It's so simple for kids, so complex for adults.
It's really rare as a teenager to be offered a role that actually resembles what it's like to be a teenager, because there are so many stereotypes that might be attractive to watch, but make you think: 'Who is that? Who has that life at 16?'
Casting young people is always so difficult, and they got it so right in 'Game of Thrones.' All the young actors are amazingly talented and so professional.
My parents didn't want me to be a regular in a series. I was a working actor from time to time but they thought was a little too much being a star of a series. They wanted me to have a slightly more normal childhood.
A lot of actors in my age bracket look at being still standing as pretty good.
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