For the first six months of my stand-up career, I was talking like Danny Dyer. I was doing a lot of 'alright guvnors?' It wasn't true to who I was.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
I had always been heavily influenced by stand-up. I was in a comedy team called Red Johnny And The Round Guy.
You know what? I did a lot of things that were deliberate, and they all backfired. I was trying desperately to become Will Ferrell or Adam Sandler, and it did not work for me. I took a lot of leaps that I shouldn't have, traditionally speaking. I paid the price for that. I was not as hire-able for a while. But then I just gave all that up.
When I was at youth theatre and drama school, I never thought people would mistake me for a stand-up.
I've always been a gurner. I tried to reel it in. You know there was a period when I thought I was going to be a really serious actress, but the gurning... I can't get in control of it. It just runs away with me.
And then, as the years went on, I just kept moving along, busting into doors and getting roles, until I started to actually believe that what these other people were saying was true.
A few years back I was asked if I would go and meet a director and his various acolytes, and it occurred to me halfway through the meeting that what I was doing was auditioning. And I thought, 'Well, hang on buddy. I've done half a century of this.'
I look at the careers of people I'm standing on the shoulders of. People like Lena Horne, Ella Fitzgerald, Sammy Davis Jr., and Sarah Vaughan. These are icons I wanted to emulate, and I feel like they've been holding me up for quite a long time.
When I came to England, the first director I met was Charles Sturridge, who told me, 'You speak like somebody out of the 1950s.'
I never thought about what people would say about me. I was just a young guy who was excited to become a comedian and an actor, and I just wanted to get to do what I got to do.
Stand-up came out of three things. Frustration, necessity and arrogance. I didn't have a great career ahead of me in anything. Someone literally said to me, 'You should try stand-up,' and took me to a venue.
No opposing quotes found.