I Want Any Excuse To

I Never Felt I Was Quite The Ticket Academically. I Always Felt I Had To Put In An Enormous Amount Of Effort Not To Be Disappointing. So I Worked Really Hard, But At The Time It Suited Me, Because I Didn't Do Very Much Else.

I Want To Discover More Things About Acting.

The Ratings Thing Is The Real Issue. It Really Hurts Movies. For Example, In Redbelt, I Smoked. The Whole Plot Of My Character Was Based On The Fact That I Was A Smoker. And Then They Discovered That Just By Having Someone Smoking In The Movie, It Immediately Makes The Rating An R. So They Had To Cut Out Every Shot Where I Had A Cigarette In My Hand And It Totally Affected The Performance. That Was Very Frustrating To David Mamet As Well. I Can Remember Him Saying, "it's A Nightmare."

It's Very Difficult To Find The Time Or The Money For People To Organize Rehearsals For Some Movies. It Staggers Me How Little Preparation Often Goes Into These Scenes Which Are Difficult And Complicated. You Think, "god, It's Crazy. I've Never Met This Person Before And Here I Am Having To Work At How To Do A Whole Performance On The Set." It Was Great To Have A Few Days Of Just Talking To Michael [caine] And Daniel [barber] And Thinking About The Characters And The Relationship Between Them Before We Started Shooting.

Accents Are Very Tangible, Blessedly, And If You Have To Do One, It's A Way Of Getting Into Character. I Can Read It Through A Few Times And Pretend I Know What I'm Doing!