When I was 16, I played Macbeth at school and my English teacher said, 'I think you may have acting talent. Try to get into the National Youth Theatre of Great Britain and see where you get.' I wouldn't have thought of that at all. I wanted to be a surgeon, but I wasn't a clever man.
Sometimes I wake up and think, 'I want to look like Sherlock Holmes today,' and other times I want to look like a witch from 'Macbeth.'
If you're a woman doing classic theater, the big roles are often destroyers. I've played Hedda Gabler, Lady Macbeth, some of the Chekhovian heroines, Electra, Phaedra - they're all powerful women, but they're forces of negativity.
I'm just having a wonderful time. It's an interesting thing that I'm very comfortable with this material and I don't know why. Maybe it's because I did MacBeth.
After making my stage debut aged nine as Macduff's small son in 'Macbeth,' I had played a number of parts, from 'Twelfth Night's Viola to 'The Merchant Of Venice's Portia'.
I have been thinking a lot about what we see in villains, how we relate to villains, and what it is about certain villains that we actually empathize with. Like Macbeth. We're not supposed to like a guy who kills the king and takes over, but there's something about him we're really fascinated by.
Every time 'Lady Macbeth' and everyone involved in the film gets nominated, it's amazing.
I think it's so interesting which ways your career can go. I would have been a completely different actor doing a completely different story, and I would have missed 'Lady Macbeth.'
'Lady Macbeth' is a great opportunity for me to prove that maybe the outcome of 'The Falling' was not necessarily a fluke.
With 'Lady Macbeth,' I had two other things offered to me, and they would have also been very fun, but you just have to figure that out. And then you do it.
