It's a weird profession, as I don't really consider myself an actor. I did at one point, and I went and started doing auditions, and I was so useless at them and so demoralised by doing audition after audition and not getting them and also not being able to take it in my stride at all. I just felt crushed and worthless.
The acting life can be quite scary, really.
My life is divided up into before I had kids and after.
I have trouble keeping a lid on the self-hatred.
I remember films I made at university, which are unbelievably pretentious. Poetry that I'd written that I delivered to camera, against a Venetian blind, strong shadows, looking slightly off-camera.
I thought I could see how standup worked. I never thought of being an actor - or anything else, really - but I thought, 'I can see how you get on stage and tell jokes.'
I find the pressure to be funny when you're being interviewed live - quite intense.
I always dreamt of being in 'Kerrang.' That was my ambition. I read that religiously when I was into heavy metal. Then the jazz magazines took over.
Writing can make you feel a bit psychotic. You create a world, and you're sitting inside it all day long, talking to people who are not really there.
Life without music would be a mistake.
I can act with either eye, but you've got to be twice as good as an actor to act with one eye. You need to put all your emotions just through one eye and really punch it out of that eye. I found it quite difficult to do at first, and then I found a technique that allowed me to act with one eye, which I patented.
Pain - that is what life is about, isn't it? Suffering with moments of reprieve.
I'm not a natural comic, I don't think. That's why I gave up stand-up. It was hard. It involved a lot of death. Dying. Dying on stage. But it's one of those jobs you can only learn by doing it.
I want to do things or write things that make people feel a bit more beautiful or tragic or something because there are so many other things than just funny.
Laughter's good, but it's not love. It's one aspect. One emotion you're eliciting from your audience.
