When I was in theater school, we did these relationship exercises - you would play my sister, and I'd give you all this information about my sister, and then we'd get up and perform this scene, and you'd pretend to react as my sister. It was like therapy!
There's a competitive grief atmosphere in acting classes. Like, whoever has the biggest trauma is sort of like the winner of the day today or gets the A+. That, I could identify with from when I sort of dabbled with method acting classes when I was a teenager.
I feel lucky. I grew up in an open-minded, multi-cultural community in West Vancouver in Canada. There were people who had escaped some kind of oppression. Some of them were first-generation immigrants, others were one or two generations back.
As an actor, you're just trying to get work in any medium. I remember when I started out, I did motion capture for video games, and then I did a terrible Best Buy commercial for Best Buy employees.
I was obsessed with 'Reality Bites' and 'My So-Called Life.'
The thing I love about theater is the fact that everyone's complicit. We're either there as a storyteller, or we're there as a listener, and it's basically a campfire situation.
There's a lot of pressure to look a certain way, act a certain way, have enough Instagram followers.
I remember sitting in front of the British Museum and having a moment - an epiphany, I guess - that I just had to live here. And now that I have grown to understand the British sense of humour here, I love the culture, too.
In Vancouver, you have to lock your doors - not for strangers, but for bears.