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.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
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.
I've done stand-up since I was 18 years old, and I absolutely love it, but I used to go onstage, and the audience was my peers. Now I go onstage, and I could be their mother.
One thing about being a stand-up is it's a one-man show. You gotta do everything. You're the producer, writer, director, and the actor. You just gotta be out there and perform and give your all. It's such an honest form of art that it just taught me so much, and it kind of prepared me for manhood at an early age.
I didn't really like the aloneness of doing stand-up.
Stand-up was my entree into the entertainment world. I didn't have to act out somebody else's words. I could just stand there with a microphone, and nobody would interrupt me. It's the most narcissistic thing you could probably do.
The best part about being a stand-up is the connection with the audience. There's nothing more gratifying then when you can make 300 people applaud and stand up - because that's all you.
Stand-up will always come first. I've been doing it for 22 years, and nothing compares to that connection you have with the audience. It's euphoric.
I will always do stand-up, even if my acting career takes off. Stand-up is my life.
I just always loved stand-up. It's like magic. You say something, and a whole room full of people laughs together. Say something else, they laugh again. The fact that people come to see that and participate in that... I don't know, it's just like magic.
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.