I had a really complicated relationship with acting for a long time.
I wasn't perfect and didn't have it together. I felt alone. So through acting, I decided to be a shape shifter and with every role become the character instead of being myself. It meant about 10 years of no one knowing I was the same person in every movie.
Acting, for me, was therapeutic. It was a way of expressing yourself.
I was always in trouble from an early age. I had a fraught relationship with my parents, who were very traditional. Doing plays at school was a joyous release.
I've learned a lot with every character, everything from being a cop, to a lawyer to a tattoo artist. And underneath that stuff, I've been really able to find myself through the characters. It's served as a cheap form of emotional therapy.
The thing that attracted me to acting the most was I always felt quite unsure or insecure as a kid, and for some reason, when I got to perform these lines and characters, I felt safe. There was this confidence and excitement from performing that I loved.
I still think you shouldn't use acting as therapy.
For me, acting is like a therapy. I can express myself fully when I am acting and have blood in my veins. Even when I'm not working, I'm always living in my own world, imagining characters.
I guess we're all lucky to be in this profession where you can be someone else for two or three months on a film shoot. I find it restful. Vachement agreable.
When I was onstage doing the work, adrenaline killed the pain because I never hurt in front of an audience.
It's been liberating to be able to play someone who's a bada– or promiscuous, because that's the opposite of who I am … It's like a drug.
One of the things I love about acting is that it reveals a certain something about yourself, but it doesn't reveal your own personal story.
I've played a lot of bad guys, and I'm pretty good at leaving my work at the office. And I look at acting as having a certain sort of therapeutic nature to it.
People think stars never have any problems or cares. That's bull. Why would we show any more than one mask to the public. There's a whole lotta things I've done that I don't want to think about. But I bring it all right out when I need it for a role.
I have been blessed with roles that allow me to express something very personal at a specific time in my life. I seek them out; acting is my therapy.
I don't know if I ever realized, initially, that I didn't tic when I was so focused on my acting. I think it was after I had already done it a few years, when I went, 'Hey, interesting that this happens.'
Me being able to trash hotel rooms on set means I don't do it in real life.
I always felt like I needed to act. Not that I wanted to act, but I needed to. And I still feel that same way. There's an expression that I get to have in acting that I can't consciously express in my life. It has always defined me and it always will.
In a weird way, that's the beauty of being an actor. You get to live out things that you're afraid of, and you get to say, 'Well, maybe I can get to the end of it and survive it intact and I can be the hero of my own story.' It's kind of a way of exorcising fear.
I've always felt a spiritual connection with acting. And I felt whole when I was onstage.
I'm not a super emotional person, so that's one reason I love acting - it makes me deal with myself in that kind of way.
That's what I love about acting, you get to find little pieces of yourself in every character you play.
I find it really difficult to even articulate things that I've done in the past. I express myself through the characters that I play, not through the articulation of them later.
Acting has always been a way for me to express the emotions I had buried. If I hadn't acted, I would have gone insane. In my acting class, I could let out my real tears and everyone thought it was the character. But no, it was me.
You learn stuff from every character you play about the human condition that can be quite enlightening.
