I live a very Kenneth Williams-like existence.
Leigh [Bowery] affected a posh English voice and elongated his vowels, and you never knew if he was being sincere or mocking you. If I ever commented on one of his outfits he would snip, "Oh, thank you, Mr. Boy George. I do value your opinion." And then he would spin and make some ridiculous noise and mince off.
I am a little crazy but when I'm on-stage, then I really get to play it up and perform and be over the top and it's like an outlet. It's fun to 'wild' out.
You could say I'm a character actress. Or maybe a character actress who does peculiar, interesting lead roles. Does that make sense?
People keep asking me, 'What evil lurks in you to play such bad characters?' There is no evil in me, I just wear tight underwear.
... we performers are monsters. We are a totally different, far-out race of people. I totally and completely admit, with no qualmsat all, my egomania, my selfishness, coupled with a really magnificent voice.
Now what's important is that they have an attitude. Everybody has a look, but not everybody has cultivated what their stage persona is. And so when you're dealing with actors, it just makes it more difficult, because you have to help them come up with one. You know, Johnny Depp has no Johnny Depp character when he's onstage. You haven't seen An Evening With Johnny Depp at Carnegie Hall.
I'm a drag artist, and we put so much effort into creating characters, so the easiest way to show us respect is to call us by the name we gave ourselves and refer to the gender we have chosen to be on stage.
I never had an aversion because I was active in the drama club. If I had that aversion I certainly wouldn't put myself in the position of being on stage. Of course, in the drama club you're hiding behind a character.
On the stage one must not confuse the nature of a personality with the naturalness of a person.
There's things that I can do as an actor that I couldn't do in any other form of life and I've got a strange personality. But film requires strange people, so I've got a nice comfy home.
Every actor's greatest ambition is to create his own, definite and original role, a character with which he will always be identified. In my case, that role was Dracula.
Shakespeare would seem to have been a person for whom the human voice/personality in all its splendid idiosyncrasy was absolutely enthralling.
I'm obsessed with clowns and what they represent and the idea that clowns are supposed to make you laugh, but inevitably they're hiding something. That's how I look at my life.
I have to phrase this perfectly: I'm just not convinced that the attention we give to creating what we think of as a character isn't actually quite often the means by which an actor overcomes his own terror of standing there onstage and creating a mask to hide behind.
Now it looks like I'll be known as the musical comedy guy. Which is good news for me. Or I'll be known as the New Zealand idiot.
I throw dignity out the window, and just become a creature of the moment on the stage. I act like I'd never act in real life.
That's where I'm comfortable - playing a jackass on the scene, rolling in with my pocket watch and my buffoon hairdo, with my shoes.
I'm not the kind of actor who runs around and insists on being called Stravinsky by everybody, and my family has to call me Igor. I'm not that kind of actor. I think that's pretentious.
Perhaps one never seems so much at ones ease as when one has to play a part.
I hadn't intended to end up there. I meant to be a serious actor with a beard who wore a lot of black and wanted to share his misery with you.
I haven't really been able to transfer into that extraordinarily other worldly creature, other than I hope on stage.
