JOHNNY FLYNN

It's great being an actor and being part of a play or a film where there's usually quite a big group of people who are collaborating, and your job is really to fit in and share that energy. With music, because I write the songs, it's a broader, more abstract process.

I take them both seriously - I don't particularly want to be an 'actor-musician.' I want to play the great challenging parts, to be right for the part, rather than just, 'Oh, he can play the fiddle.'

The reason I stopped music for a while and concentrated on theatre was that it was more conducive to parenting; having the days free was quite handy. I love them both. I hope I don't have to compromise one for the other.

What's quite nice about this whole folk movement is that it's born out of genuine friendship. And nobody's infringing on anybody's space.

I had a series of jobs in the small fishing village in West Wales where my family lived when I was a teenager. I worked as a fisherman in the day, and then the skipper and his wife ran a small restaurant - she'd cook the fish he caught.

I really love a lot of early Sixties R&B, rock n' roll, and I love performing songs that have that power and soulfulness.

I first came across Langhorne Slim when I saw him play live, and he's an incredibly infectious performer. The way he works the crowd is mind-blowing. You can listen to his music without really listening to his lyrics, but it pays off if you do.

You might as well acknowledge what came before, because you can never do something wholly new. It's not unoriginal to make your references clear.

My guitar is a 1934 National Trojan. They call it a resonator, which is the guitar guys played in the honky-tonks before amplification. It's very loud. It's the type of guitar that Son House and Robert Johnson played.

I did a lot of theater as a young actor in my early twenties, and my first few records really came from writing songs through the rehearsal processes.

Folk music - and what people are now perceiving as being folk music - is music that's quite close to the ground. The songs sound quite old, even if they're new. They sound like they've been sung by different people for years.

The truth is there's always a hum of people playing folk music in cities.

I'm not a funny person.

Diane Cluck is part of the anti-folk movement in New York. She's got a really haunting voice, and she usually sings in the pentatonic scale.

I like getting older. I always looked younger than I was, and I found that people wouldn't give me the room to speak. The older I get, it's like, 'Oh, I'm still talking, and they're still listening.'

I imagine that, for most people, acting isn't something they think is a viable option, whereas for me, it was the most viable option. No adults around me knew how to do anything else.

Music always gets bumped until I have some time to get around to it.

I'm a huge David Hockney fan.

We had no money, my dad was out of work a lot, and we never owned a house. It was very hand-to-mouth.

I think the two are kind of synonymous for me; songwriting is like my form of diary making. It's how I process the world. Without doing that, I feel kind of lost. The characters that I play often come out in the songs and the challenges that they face, albeit in an abstract way.

I'm obsessed with pilgrimages. I love following old routes, imagining the consciousness of those who walked them.

I feel really lucky that I somehow have blagged my way into loads of different experiences. I find making a film fascinating, I find making a play amazing, and working with my band and scoring things... it's all really cool. I'm just a glutton for experience, really.

I definitely asked too many questions of my teachers and was probably a bit facetious at times.

I grew up playing classical violin and a lot of Bach and Mozart and the things that Einstein loved.

It's not in the mainstream media, but across towns, it is amazing how there are small groups of people getting together and forming artistic collectives - they may not be being overtly political, but I'd say by channelling their energy into community projects, that's a valid political statement.