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Stand-up can take you in so many different places, man. So many doors can be opened up from stand-up comedy, and the first one that was opened up for me was acting. But you can go from acting to being a TV personality to being a radio personality to being a writer to being a producer, to just being a visionary, to voiceover work.

I left school and couldn't find acting work, so I started going to clubs where you could do stand-up. I've always improvised, and stand-up was this great release. All of a sudden, it was just me and the audience.

I've never done stand-up; I came via small-scale touring theatre, through the Royal Shakespeare Company, the National Theatre, then I got employed on that as an actor who had a humorous sensibility.

Stand-up comedy is a lot about amplifying emotions and situations; movie acting has a lot to do with mellowing things down and making them subtle. The transition was almost terrifying because of the magnitude of change.

But long story short, I didn't start doing stand-up because I wanted to have a TV show or be an actor or even wanted to write sketch comedy. I got into stand-up because I love stand-up.

I will always do stand-up, even if my acting career takes off. Stand-up is my life.

You know, stand-up comedy is where I pretty much started out.

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.

The best part about stand-up is that you control everything. Period. When you work in movies, or on TV shows, there are 50 other people involved.

Stand-up is like a movie every night. You write it, direct it, produce it, the audience votes, and you go home. There's nothing more satisfying.