Nice,' I say, realizing only afterward that I've mimicked her, a bad habit of mine; I'm like one of those animals that imitates its predators to survive.
In L.A., if you're an actor, your personal and professional lives are too intertwined.
I never really created a difference between Shaffer Smith, my actual name, and Ne-Yo. They are kind of one in the same. It's been a bit of a gift and a curse. As far as Shaffer Smith is concerned, I've never viewed myself as a celebrity.
As an actor, you are aware of how a role can seep into your real life.
It is with some violation of the imagination that we conceive of an actor belonging to the relations of private life, so closely do we identify these persons in our mind with the characters which they assume upon the stage.
I feel like, when I play characters, I create a space in myself that feels like the character and that doesn't go away. Somehow, you carry that with you. You let it go, but a little piece of it remains.
There is simply too much of my life that is involved in my work that I couldn't replicate in any other way.
Actors sometimes immerse themselves into it so deeply that the line between who they are and their character can become blurred. For me, I think it's just about getting clearer on my whole life and who I am in order to make it possible for me to play whatever character is presented to me at a particular time.
It is very hard to separate one's self from a character. Sometimes the people closest to me have to be very understanding.
I lived my 'Mom' character. I became Devaki.
When you realize the writers start writing to who you are, you're basically reading reviews of yourself. And then it becomes this cyclical nightmare where I feel like I need to play into it, then I find myself acting like the character in real life.
Classically posh girls like Victoria Hervey are now trying to be Hollywood girls. Hollywood girls are trying to be posh girls. Everything is all mixed up, turned on its head.
I think for a lot of people that are in performing arts, it's easy to fall into the trap of starting to confuse what's real life and what's not, because to your body it's all real.
If Russell Crowe says that he's Noah, he's Noah. You never doubt it. If he says that he's the Gladiator, he's the Gladiator. He's every character that he says he is. I've never doubted anything that he's done.
If I dreamt this, while walking, walking in the London streets, the subconscious of each and every other life, past and present, brushing me in passing, what makes it real? Writing it down.
Most people can't tell now who wrote what. I like that blurring of identities within the band. because it becomes a unified thing that can't be related to other forms of historical poetry.
Maybe that was the price of loving someone: You lost your grasp of where they ended and you began.
I love the idea that somebody is going to compare me to my character or think that I am like my character when they see me. I feel like that is a role that I am willing to fulfill.
I am an emotional plagiarist, stealing other people's pain, subsuming it into my own until I can't remember whose it is any more.
People dressing up as you is always a weird experience. Or sometimes you get the odd person who genuinely believes that you are your character. I've had that happen where I'm like, "No. No. No. Call me Sophie. It's OK." And they are like, "No my lady. I can't!" And it's really weird. But some people just find it difficult to separate that kind of thing.
Even on your hiatus, you feel like you need to keep the character in the back of your brain.
I thought Eddie Redmayne portrayed me very well... At times I thought he was me.
I played a role. That is what actors do. But I played it too well. I went too far. And by the time I wanted to stop, to take a bow and leave the stage, it was too late.
