And it was the idea that you can do a play - like a Shakespeare play, or any well-written play, Arthur Miller, whatever - and say things you could never imagine saying, never imagine thinking in your own life.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
I had always wanted to retell a Shakespeare play. It was an ambition from college days. But in order to be able to do it... the circumstances in my life didn't come together for a long time.
When I first started acting, and we would all sit down and talk about Shakespeare and how great it was. I thought well, I suppose it is.
I think reading Shakespeare's plays when I was young was extremely important. He had the ability to make utter strangers come alive.
But I find with Francis Bacon, some of the things were in the place, and someone who was connected with these schools of thought, and someone who had a motivation that equals the scope of the comedy and the tragedy in the plays.
It was a wonderful experience to live the life for a year; to spend all day doing Shakespeare and then do a play in the evening.
It meant so much to me as a kid to see professional theater and hear Shakespeare's words.
In my own life, I believe it was an early education in poetical metaphor that helped me to grapple with and make sense of all the difficult and traumatic things that were to come.
If I'm serious, yes, I'd like to have done what Shakespeare did... to act and write. You learn so much from acting. One of our great writers, Alan Bennett, does both supremely well. When I write a story, I tend to speak it aloud as I'm writing it.
I never wanted to become an actress because I'd read great literature or seen great Shakespeare. It was more just wanting to understand what the people were really like, why they said all the strange things they did.
This was Shakespeare's form; who walked in every path of human life, felt every passion; and to all mankind doth now, will ever, that experience yield which his own genius only could acquire.