There's something about live players that you cannot get with machines: With live musicians, you can strike a groove, you can feed off each other... And, even though somebody might make a slight mistake, it's all real!
In a way, I don't create anything; I just open myself to the character, and the character takes over. Of course, I'm aware of it, and I'm driving it, but I don't try to control it. If I try to control it, it goes wrong.
I always try to bring a little bit of my own personality to the character, or some sort of personal connection makes it a little bit more of an organic portrayal and the audience can kind of maybe believe it a little bit more. But I always look for something to kind of connect with and identify with, or bring something of myself to the table.
I want to be in a more natural state while doing acting.
Oh, everything we did was completely organic - from the way we looked to the way we sounded, the way we played - everything.
I allow an area for improvisation because the chemical things actors bring to stories make it not work.
Acting to me is a very organic art form and you just go and do it. And I like to direct the same way that I like to be directed. Let me bring in what I want to bring in, and if something's wrong, just tell me about it and I'll make some corrections or adjustments. And that's what I do.
On stage, you have nothing to hide behind. It allows the work to live in a more organic place. It's almost like a meditation. You have to go on that stage and be as present as possible.
It's always best not to be thinking a hell of a lot while you're acting, because you want it to be as spontaneous as possible, not too intellectual. Just behaving and listening to other people who you're doing scenes with. I always like the latter when it looks easy, even though it may not be.
When I'm improvising, I'm out of my head. I've done a lot of projects recently where there hasn't been a script. It's all been based on outlines. At first, that's terrifying, just because you don't have the words in front of you and you don't know how it's going to come out, but that's what's really exciting about it. You don't know what's going to happen. It really forces you to listen to the other people, and I think the most natural acting comes out of that.
But on stage you're able to just take the character from one point to the end and it's a fluid, organic piece. It's about being completely present all the time, right there in the moment.
I work very hard on motivating everything I do as an actor. Explosive moments have to be completely motivated; whether they're explosive comedy or explosive horror, they have to come organically out of a scene and an interaction with another actor.
Honestly, live is my favorite way of performing. Every show is a completely different energy. With recording, it's not really as organic as it can be. But I feel like I'm a lot more fluid, and I can be a little bit more aggressive.
I don't rehearse a lot. I try to keep it organic. Even in movies, the less I rehearse, the better I am.
I think that as actors age, the work becomes more organic to them.
In 'Jonaki,' it isn't about the individual actor. The actor is as important as the wall, or the water flowing down the wall, or a shadow. That kind of acting is also fascinating to me, not to be invisible necessarily, but to be in perfect synchronicity with the environment.
I kind of connected the dots, like, 'Oh, we're just saying stuff. We're just saying things that make sense, so let's just say them like you say them in real life.' It was my first and one of my only acting lessons 'cause I never really studied acting.
Life-actors never rehearse and need no script. A life-actor uses whatever he has available, nothing more, nothing less.
Nothing is staged exactly as it was, because I can't remember - and I consider that an advantage.
I do prefer doing more takes. There's something very organic that comes from the first take, but certain things come out. More details come out, in the way another actor says something. It's always this investigative process. You come further and further to the truth, the more you escalate. I like to do a lot of takes. I have a hunger for it. I like to see what there is to discover in a scene, that hasn't been thought of.
Working with Katherine Hepburn, she said to me, "Don't act." She said, "Read the lines. Just be. Just speak the lines." I said, "Okay." She said, "You look good. You got a good pair of shoulders, you got a good head, good face."
I don't like to be challenged in the way that often happens, where somebody writes something and then you, as an actor, are expected to really make it up in your imagination. That's not really an ideal way of working.
You're on the stage and you've got all those people yelling at you, so you better be right in the moment, reacting to that. It's completely live and organic. Even 20 years later, it's the same thing. You may be even better on your instrument. Hopefully, you are.
I always wanted the actors to feel really free to leave the words behind if they weren't working, reword lines, if they felt like there was impulse they wanted to follow, if it was taking the scene out of order or adding something, that you should always feel free to do that.
When I've done somewhat scripted stuff, it feels a little flat. It feels like there's not much life behind it.
