As I told you, from the time I was fifteen, I thought the theater was too much involved with actors trying to make the audience love them, being over emotional.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
Because even at the age of fifteen, I used to go see all the Broadway shows and feel that they were sentimental, that they were pandering to the audience and trying to manipulate the audience. I had no use for practically any of the shows that were hits.
It sounds so negative of me to say, but I don't feel like there were many coming-of-age films when I was growing up. I think that when I was a teenager, I felt really misrepresented in the teenage roles that I was watching onscreen. Especially in women.
It blows me away that my parents, they really weren't much into theater, but they recognized that in me. When I think about the things they did to support that, I'm blown away.
Acting was what everybody thought I should do, and at 15, when you love something so much, it's like - 'That's not what I do. That's what they do.'
I love the immediacy of an audience being there and reacting. I'm spoiled, having grown up in theater.
It was always theater for me. But part of that came out of the fact that I was always acting out as a kid. I was the kid who didn't play well with others.
It was difficult for me to feel my feelings, so I just buried them. Then I found that acting was a way for me to get them out. But now that I'm a reasonably sane adult, acting is more about my trying to engage other people: Acting is cathartic for the viewer as well.
I think, as a younger actor, you are more open to the experience. And to an extent, you want to go into things blind and energised as if you were 15. Keep that terror.
As actors, we put in our best, but when people don't like a film, you have to learn to deal with it. I've learnt not to get too emotional.
I just realized at some point that I was hopelessly in love with the theater. I fought it for a long time because I thought theater was for, you know, insufferable actors.