London audiences are tricky, too. They don't laugh as much as the Northern audiences because, and I hate to say this, they are a bit cleverer normally, and they are picking up on all the little details and listening more carefully.
When you celebrate somebody's bad work on the terms that define their good work, how can that artist have anything but contempt for an audience that can't tell the good from the bad?
Audiences are brutally honest nowadays. If they don't like an actor, they have all the right to write him off.
You can always trust that an audience is smarter than a studio thinks it is.
When I first started, as long as you were a bit brown, you could play any kind of ethnic anything. Now it's much more localised and specific. I feel like a wise old woman looking back on the evolution of how much more sophisticated audiences are.
These audiences are so damn smart, way smarter than the studios give them credit for.
My hope is that digital technology will level things out more and that it will eventually eliminate favoritism. But technology cannot do it alone. The audience has to become more discriminating as well and not buy into every big tentpole movie because they have been brainwashed into thinking that's the movie to see.
All I can do is put out the good stuff, and people will make the decision on whether they like it. My fans are very intelligent people. They're not stupid. They know what's good.
What an audience decides about where certain characters come from is really up to them.
I find that the British audience listens and they accept the performer for its value, value as a singer, as a vocalist, value as a performer. You're only accepted if you're good.
