Earlier on in my career I felt that I had to hide behind a lot of different masks, and showboat ways of performing. Now, that's a lie. The less I have to hide, the less I have to act.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
Until I came out, my acting was all about disguise, and thereafter it became about telling the truth.
I love a mask. It's why I've got a thing about good writing. When you're acting, you're going into someone else's work. You're behind his words; it's not you.
I think maybe even one of the reasons I became an actor was actually to hide. I mean, it sounds paradoxical because, of course, people are standing up in a public place and encouraging other people to look at them. So that's not the conventional definition of hiding.
I think now that I'm in the autumn of my life, and I'm getting a chance of having an overview and looking at the shape of how things happen, when things happen, why things happen, I think it was fitting that I spent most of my early career doing mask work, because I just don't think I was that comfortable in my own skin.
I've managed to keep my career going in a way that suits me. I'll perform, and then I'll go home to my actual life, and I've never been so visible.
By the time I hit college, my secret shame was the reason I was an actor was my own words sort of dried up. I stopped writing. I stopped being able to form my own vision. That's actually what my first feature is about - looking back at two different selves.
Acting deals with very delicate emotions. It is not putting up a mask. Each time an actor acts he does not hide; he exposes himself.
I have to phrase this perfectly: I'm just not convinced that the attention we give to creating what we think of as a character isn't actually quite often the means by which an actor overcomes his own terror of standing there onstage and creating a mask to hide behind.
Although I know it's unfair I reveal myself one mask at a time.
What once was an expression of who I was - acting - also became my hiding place.