Building a Successful Career with Special Guest Richard Brake

0:00and i could see because i was watching my thinking again and i could see this thought go yeah but you're not really going to make that you know this little thought of doubt this little bit of me just coming in and just kind of not really believing what i'm saying and it's really important to watch these little thoughts i think as an actor you can tell everybody your family you i'm gonna make it dad you know i'm gonna do it but truthfully you as much as you might think you

0:30believe that you really have to look at what you really think so i watched them and i just laughed them away i go he's just a thought you're not me just a thought i think just the awareness of it itself is enough you know to go hey i'm not that hello and welcome back to the spiritual psychology of acting podcast this week we conclude our third

1:02season by chatting to the brilliant richard break if you don't recognize the name you will most definitely recognize the face as richard has starred in a ton of movies and tv series over the last 20 years after landing a supporting role in christopher nolan's batman begins richard began to break out in the 2005 film doom steven spielberg's munich and hannibal rising since then he's had a vast and varied career not just in movies but in television as well appearing in peaky blinders ray donovan the

1:36mandalorian and probably most famously as the night king in the hbo series game of thrones richard is a fantastically versatile actor but he's particularly adept at playing villains monsters and psychopaths as is evident in his work in horror films like mandy barbarian and his fan favorite character doomhead in rob zombies 31 but despite being scarily good in these horror roles richard has a very warm down-to-earth lovely nature it was especially good to get to

2:08chat with him as he's worked with john early on in his career studying the spiritual psychology of acting we discussed the impact that had on his life as well as the turning points that helped him build the career he has today so for the final time this season let's jump into it so we're very pleased to welcome to the podcast today actor richard break thanks so much for

2:44joining us today richard how you doing good thank you thanks for uh having me here oh it's a real pleasure i know you don't do many podcasts and interviews so very thrilled to have you and how are you today john yeah well i'm i'm very happy to have my old mate richard on today i haven't seen him for a few years but he was in some of the sort of earlier classes well not there was probably 10 years into teaching i met richard and uh well i've watched him grow and grow as an actor since then and create a really wonderful body of work which i know we're going to discuss so i'm i'm really

3:20thrilled to be talking to richard today it's fantastic great yeah that would be great to chat about first though richard it'd be great to know a bit more about you what's your your story how where did you start and where did you get your start in acting well uh i say it was uh reasonably late uh i think i was 17 when i started uh did my first play i knew pretty much my whole life that i didn't want a proper job the idea of going into an office so i really wanted to be a writer so i was sort of

3:54obsessed with with right i want to be a novelist and and then i i i remember watching um i was late night in america i must have been about 16 or or so and uh who's afraid of virginia wolf came on you know that yeah yeah the richard burton uh liz taylor film and it just it was like late night tv i just happened to be up watching it and it just blew my mind so i went to the live school library got a copy of the play and read it and just it transformed my life it there was something about

4:28something about it the immediacy of it the ability to tell a story so succinctly you know what it was about all these things deeply affected me and i began trying to write plays and i wrote some probably terrible renditions of of edward alby plays basically that a 17 year old would write and then i was at school and a friend of mine had done a bit of acting at the school and he did this girl somewhat attractive fellow student came out and said we need more guys to audition for the school

4:59play it was arthur miller's a crucible and i guess to me they literally didn't have enough guys so my friend and i went in i went in mostly because this girl was doing it and uh we obviously got parts because it was literally not enough men and uh i remember it was probably probably about two weeks after rehearsals it started and i was walking back after rehearsals with this same friend and i i remember very very clearly turning to him and saying this is what i want to do for the rest of my life

5:30i just loved the collaborativeness of making this work of art um if you call it that 17 year old to do in the crucible but this sort of challenge of creating this character when i knew literally nothing about creating a character that at that point in my life but i just loved it i just loved it wasn't the you know the crowd and none of that had happened yet it hadn't hadn't been in front of an audience so it wasn't any of that it was just the process of making this this piece and luckily that

6:03was 40 years ago i guess 41 years ago and you know i'm still doing it so it worked out but um and so from there i went to university and i studied drama and english at university in america that was my first experience of doing acting classes and i don't want to go on and on here but uh because i got a whole do you want to hear it yeah we want to hear the kittles of the grave stop me we'll be getting bored because i'm welsh so i could tell stories forever so if i that's how i wondered it's like

6:37so i knew you were welsh you know i'm half welsh yeah and i but i i wanted i wonder what so when did you you were born in wales and then you moved to america when you were young yeah i was two when we emigrated to america and then grew up in america came back and lived here for a couple of years when i was a teenager uh in birmingham which is why i'm a birmingham city fan secretly um and uh and then but i spent most of my childhood in america and university in america and then i came here for drama

7:09school but i you know i will say to you know because i know you know we have uh hopefully that you know some some people that are sort of starting out in their their careers and i know that when i was at uh university i think it was very early like the first week of university they had auditions for uh i think it was mother courage uh breath play and the audition process was you had to go into this massive kind of classroom the acting classroom or whatever and i would signed up to do acting course that year you know acting 101 or whatever it was called and that teacher was the

7:44director and you had to audition in front of probably i felt like 100 there's probably 80 fellow acting students from the you know seniors down to the freshmen and i got up there and i was literally trembling i mean i had no um breath like i had not learned anything and i was just trembling and i remember him saying just take a moment walk around the classroom and you know try again well have you ever walked around a classroom that's completely silent with 80 of your peers who had

8:16never seen you act before by the time i came back and did again i think my legs had gone completely at that point i mean it was the most humiliating experience um most people would have just given up but i think there is a part of me that's insane it drove me further i was like i am going to figure this effing thing out and so i you know the tail between my legs showed up to class on on wednesday and i knew i needed i just was determined to be a better actor to learn how to act better you know i

8:49would see performances i remember seeing john malkovich do burn this in new york in the 80s i moved to new york after a university and i saw him perform burn this and there was such freedom in his work on stage like i'd never seen anything like it and i was like how does he you know what what is he doing like how i want to be able to do that it was a huge moment for me seeing that performance and seeing the freedom in in that performance so i studied at the michael checkoff studio with a wonderful teacher named

9:24beatrice straight who studied with michael in england she actually won the oscar for the least amount of time on on screen for network she plays his wife and that and while i was there there was always this talk of find your objective right that's the big american word right objective purpose what's the objective what's your character's objective and i could go my character wants him to leave the room or my character wants you know to be rich or whatever it was you know i could put it in words but i was like what's that mean you know if i'm trying and then i would proceed not to

10:01really act that i would just you know do it and i knew i wasn't embodying it and then another moment in new york there was a magazine called premiere premiere premiere magazine or something it's like a film magazine they don't exist anymore okay hurt who was a i was a big fan of william hurts at the time was the 80s he was doing some pretty pretty good performances and he was being interviewed in this magazine and then he says something like you have to be in the verb right well i knew he meant like the

10:32objective right f is he talking about right and what does that mean to be in i could tell you what the objective was or the purpose but i was there was this madness in me that really wanted to like figure this out and be be better be be these actors i could see doing something they were doing something i wasn't doing and then i applied to every drama school in the world and got rejected from every drama school in the world so for all those people out there struggling to get into places and um except for

11:03one mount view where our mutual friend eddie marzen was in my class with me and and we were very very blessed to have a teacher that both john and i worked with a guy named sam kogan who introduced me to this many things but one of which ones that really one that really blew my mind was this idea of uh active imagination which you know john will talk about and uh uh and pictures and impressions so that

11:34we had purposes or objectives and we see in pictures we see in pictures and impressions and to use that in order to is william hurt said get in the verb or more importantly to kind of embody this purpose or objective of the character using pictures impressions and active imagination which i'd never done before i'd always seen me walking around but rather seeing everything through my eyes and that just changed my life i'd never be an actor today if it wasn't to start from that that was just like somebody opened

12:07the door suddenly and i was like oh my god but there were drawbacks with with sam's work and we can discuss there was a kind of need to be right and a lot of you know things that caused a kind of stiffness to it um you know wasn't fully formed i was still struggling you know how to do these things um joy i took a couple years off actually from acting was in my early 30s mid 30s and eddie actually

12:37said oh this guy i knew of john because you know john had i'd been teaching for about 10 years and i knew that he had been a student of sam's and that he had developed sam's work considerably and uh eddie's like you should study with john you know again i'm you know i'm in my i'm 30 something years old i don't know if you know did it work but i was determined you know i went back i kept studying i mean one weekend a month me and another good buddy of ours uh eddie and i howard um name check lovely howard who's another great actor that we would show up one weekend a month to john's workshop did it for

13:11several years and that really allowed the freedom you know john had really developed things principally in terms of spirituality in terms of the method that really started with stanisovsky and then makes his way down to us today and just allowed me so much more freedom so that was my kind of journey it was really like when it continues it continues today you know constantly thinking how can i be better you know i'm obsessed with being a better actor you know i'm 59 years old and i'm

13:43still obsessed with it yeah yeah was the click that you had going from you know learning all the great things we learned with active imagination and and how that you know and i remember a lot of people even when i teach that today a lot of people realize for the first time that they think in pictures it's like i ask them do you think in pictures some of the time or all of the time and they say all of the time and i say you're aware that you're in thinking pictures some of the time or all of the time they're like oh only some of the time it's like well that's your first homework is start

14:14observing the fact that you think in pictures start developing the awareness to to see all of that but but i think there was a there was that sense of the dog chasing the tail the sort of the mind trying to fix the mind you were talking a bit about that just before we came on i thought that would be useful to share yeah i think that's uh very important you know you know sam would always talk about finishing your thinking and but because i think partly because sam himself i believe was an atheist i remember clearly this concept that we are our thoughts right we are nothing but our thoughts

14:49we are just a combination of thoughts now that instinctively i knew you know after i've done sam and kind of began to meditate and do some things myself but that just can't be right and then when i met you obviously you completely do not believe that that there is a concept of consciousness or as we used to say there's the big self consciousness and this is kind of other self and so there is something that can shine light upon these thoughts it allows a kind of separation an ability to see a construct in our

15:22minds of who we think we are i am this i am that you know i want this i want that um but without that you are literally a mind looking at a mind so thoughts are looking at thoughts so you know that's just going to go around in circles you're never going to finish your thinking because you have thinking looking at thinking there has to be a kind of sense of consciousness a sense of us i think that does have to be a spiritual base to begin to make this work which was obviously the second kind of door opening was working with you

15:55and and this realization that yes we are consciousness and then these thoughts are imposed upon that in essence we create our our thinking and therefore there's a way out of our thinking you know we don't have to be run by these these thoughts and we can also create thoughts to create characters yeah so yeah that was it sounds like that's where you know the freedom that you were looking for that you saw in john malkovich's live performance and that that would have been tripping you up is that that self-consciousness of watching what you're doing with the desire to be really good at it

16:28i suppose as well when you realize that you know you're the self that's observing the thoughts and you're not the thoughts themselves there's an immediate freedom in that you know we talk about the nature of the self being truth consciousness and bliss there's a sense of you know that actually i'm okay you know and a lot of actors well a lot of people go into their various things with this underlying sense that there's something wrong with me or i'm not okay in some way and coming to the spiritual teachings and the meditation i really hope or i've seen really that that gives people a sense of their

17:03real self that's you know the innocence of their real self uh and then from there be able to create any characters we've seen with you you know some some of the characters that you've created as some of the most you know the darkest characters i've ever seen on screen um but are played with great love and enjoyment because there is that freedom in the actor you know and i think that's um probably what gave you the freedom that you were looking for i think it did i think um you know i was in terms of

17:35malkovich i think a lot of it is it's being able to look at and we did a lot of this when we were working together um in the class all of us was looking at our own thinking which you can do from this place when you're in a place that you realize oh wait i'm not all these thoughts i am consciousness like you just said i am um you know sat chitnananda whatever i am then there's space where i can go oh you know that thought i mean remember having a big one you know go back to moving to america when i was two

18:06was that you know remember in class really seeing that i had a thought that i'm the outsider that i don't belong because my parents had that they moved to you know atlanta georgia 1968 they're british they don't you know it's a very different world back then they felt like they desperately wanted to be american they wanted to belong and they felt like they could never they would never have i used to say they would never have like the passport as it were to being truly american because they were always slightly outsiders because they weren't from there and i kind of had gotten that and had

18:40that and obviously i moved even more around the sense was projected into my acting so i was sitting in an audition look around everybody waiting to in the waiting room and i felt they all had this secret passport to acting that i just would never have i was born without it just like i was born without my parents were born without being american um you know i could see that thinking and how i could trace it back and but i was only able to do that from a place of you know once i had understood the sense of

19:12that i am not these that i am consciousness so i can sit and look at the i go okay there you are you're just a thought you're not real you know you're just a you're not who i truly am i am just consciousness as it were and you know those began to slowly slip away uh and as a result i had much more freedom because these things created a sense of discomfort in my work um you know i think someone like malkovich i think there are people that have less of these i had a bunch you know there's

19:43some people born with less they have a different kind of upbringing they might have less of this thinking that can restrict us but um or for you having a tangible way of being able to name what the idea is you know we call it a self-image you know i'm an outsider and then understand you know the history of it and how it got into your mind in the first place with the situation of moving to america and not feeling like you belonged in that area and that idea building up and then being able to

20:14see ah this is how it's playing itself out in my present life when i go to an audition it must have been a real aha moment and a great liberation to step out of that you know oh absolutely i mean it was uh it was a huge moment um i mean i can actually remember sitting we were in class i think i remember turning to howard and talking to him about it at lunch you know it was a big big moment but again that happened because of the sort of movement forward in terms of my journey coming to you as

20:47opposed to with sam it probably was it wasn't going to happen because i was still these thoughts looking at so the thought i want to um belong as it were or you're the thought i'm an outsider you know that thoughts this thought that's looking at the thoughts so it's never going to see it you know there has to be this space there seems to be no other truth and that we you know we can't be just our thoughts i mean it seems madness to me now to even think that but um so yeah it was a big aha moment and there's been there was quite a few of those especially around that period as i was really deeply looking at you

21:22know my thinking from this place of consciousness as it were and did it have an impact then on on your career after that did you notice any kind of difference in the parts you were getting and i did it i was much much freer um you know my i mean my career in truth it it you know i had taken a couple of years off i was sort of going into another business and decided it wasn't what to do so i came back i hadn't worked for very long i you know i had a few things and then and then started with john and then it kind of exploded uh i think around that time you know i remember doing a play

21:58up north and you know that was a really great experience which was put into practice and stuff and then got batman and then from batman shortly afterwards got um a movie called doom which was a you know big big and then then i worked with spielberg shortly after that into palma and it just like you know it sort of just literally took off i mean it was madness at the time was that the one that kicked it up was that you played joe chill yeah i mean definitely yeah batman's parents it was

22:30batman begins wasn't it is that right and um was that the one was that the one that you know getting that job that that gave you something to show people it did i mean it was it was a huge film i mean it did incredibly well so definitely had a major major impact um you know it's funny eddie and i i've always said this you always kind of feel like it's going to be this one thing that's going to be the one you know and you kind of after a couple of years you realize that for especially actors like us kind of character actors it just it's just a body of work you just keep working so

23:06not one thing has really suddenly you know changed my life as much as to a degree but you know certain things have had much more impact than other things but it's just been a gradual build of doing work but batman was definitely a big factor in terms of that i mean just go back to thinking you know i know i told this story in fact in class i think back in you know 2003 or something i was doing um cold mountain when i had like you know one scene or something in it in romania and killian murphy myself and another

23:43lovely actor were these kind of three bad guys that come in and attack natalie portman or whatever and i was working with john at the time so i was really watching my thinking and you know and we were talking a lot about how you know our thinking can can limit us and i remember um flying back from romania and i was sitting with killian and we were talking about um colin farrell so yeah colin right yeah yeah yeah and he knew obviously yeah they've been looking together in the film and killian wasn't

24:16a huge actor at this point you know 28 days later hadn't come out or anything he was doing well but he wasn't you know his his career changed a lot about three months later um when that movie came out but he um he was talking about colin farrell and colin farrell just got some big film you know he just got an x amount of money you know fairly decent sum of money not not massive but decent and i remember him saying god you know i can't wait till i i make that right and i went yeah yeah yeah me too and i could see because i was watching my thinking again from you know this place of stillness and i

24:52could see this thought go yeah but you're not really going to make that you know this little thought of doubt this little bit of me just coming in and just kind of not really believing what i'm saying i could see killian didn't have that little thought right he did well evidently and i went oh wow so i've been saying all this time yeah i'm going to make it you know i'm going to do that but i actually got little thoughts going yeah not really that's not going to happen for you you know a little self-doubt so whatever so i began to really watch them you know and it's really

25:27important to watch these little thoughts i think as an actor it's you can tell everybody your family you want damn i'm going to make it dad you know i'm going to do it but truthfully you as much as you might think you believe that you really have to look at what you really think so i watched them and i just laughed them away i go he's just a thought you're not me you're just a thought so that was 2002 end of in 2004 i got doom exactly the amount of money that we were talking about on that airplane

26:00oh wow well i still this day can see where i have certain thoughts that come in and go i say that i want to i could do this or i could win it off you know that or i could be a regular or but is that but that little thought there has some doubt so i still watch it today you know i still you can you can still have ceilings you know killian obviously his ceiling's pretty high but um you still have that that really what what's coming in there that's the purpose i want to fail yeah yeah you know you've got that you've got the visible decision to succeed you know any actor that

26:36you if you want to be an actor you want to succeed as an actor but then what what's creating those little thoughts that's the purpose i want to fail based in a self-image that i'm unworthy or i'm you know because i'm an outsider and i'm unworthy or life is for other people and not for me but the fact that you are able to see that and then change it and question it whether it's true or not you know that's you know that well that's that is what finishing off your thinking is isn't it it's seeing it having the awareness of it and then being able to gently change it and as you're

27:11saying it's just thoughts but these little thoughts are the wiring under the board that create our whole experience of life absolutely and like you say as well it's the it's the laughing it off as well and that's an important part of it it's you're not you're not struggling with you're not trying desperately to get rid of that thought it's realizing how how simple and pathetic it is that it's limiting it's like putting brakes on a car isn't it and you're just gonna keep struggling unless you get rid of that thought but it's the it's the laughing off i think is the important part to kind of it's non-judgmental isn't it you're just you're letting go of the responsibility of

27:44carrying the burden of that thought yeah absolutely because i think that you begin if you you start to try and struggle with the thought then you've lost already i think again you know the belief that you know we are not our thoughts we're actually conscious so you're able to just see it for what it is i think just the awareness of its itself is enough you know to go you know you're not real you're just for me at least it's just this awareness of it because i am not that well exactly it's just those simple words you know i am not this that creates separation and it separates you know

28:20what you are from what you're not you whenever you let go of what you're not you remember who you are exactly you don't need to create another who you are you just got to be who you are just be i guess just be otherwise you're just constantly re re trying to invent which is kind of the thing i'm going back to you know our initial work with sam was it was always something you ultimately would have to keep constructing something because you can't just be you know with if you don't believe

28:51that there is just consciousness or just truth or just stillness hi i'm martin delaney and i'm here to tell you about the upcoming seminar for the spiritual psychology of acting i ended up studying the full course and it really helped me to develop as an actor and most recently to prepare for a major film role that i was involved in following on from the

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30:20so richard i remember when you were doing the course that you shared with us an experience that you just had at the time and you were working on a steven spielberg film munich and i and i think that would be useful for people to hear that because i think you had a bit of a click in that moment as well didn't you i did i did that was uh gonna make me relive that um there was i was just in i think one scene i was playing this cia agent that was me and a couple of other cia agents meant to be

30:55meant to be drunk or pretending to be drunk so this was a i can it was a typical spielberg shot right it was this eight minute amazing sequence that the camera went all over the place there was all these very well-known actors in the scene uh you know daniel craig and all you and the camera passed to reach one and it went left and right and up and down and it took 10 minutes to set up the whole shot of maybe 20 minutes probably even longer uh and then it landed at the end kind of on me

31:26and i had to do this like one line maybe two maybe uh and so we did the you know action spielberg goes action the camera's going eight minutes all over the place timings i mean it was elaborate beautiful shot it means an amazing filmmaker and then it lands on me i drunkenly say my line you know i've been working really hard on all my pictures and everything and i did my thing and then spielberg comes out you know of his tent walks up to me and says maybe not so drunk don't make him so you know and i just

32:02thought oh my god i've ruined his shot he's getting i overacted i mean he's not he's basically saying don't overact and ruin my amazing film by your awful overacting uh i wanted the floor to open up and for me to like just disappear i felt like a postman that had won a raffle to be in a spielberg film i completely forgot i mean i just completely forgot everything i thought oh god so he's like okay

32:32set it up you know 20 minutes later they're setting up the shot i'm standing there my head's going and just before he goes action i thought you know what you know i am just consciousness i've done the work i've prepared i don't need and i just turned and i just went god or whatever you want to call it you know consciousness that you know what i truly am i'm just handing this to you i'm just handed over i literally just handed it over you know eight minutes later the camera lands back on me

33:04after it's gone by you know daniel craig and 30 other people that it lands on me i did my line felt relaxed spielberg's like great let's move on excellent and he didn't come up and say that was the greatest acting i've ever seen forever drunken cia agent but i was happy and ruined the shot again that's quite the turnaround yeah but yeah it really is just giving and i still do that to this day i often i'm usually before every take i get out of the way my consciousness do the

33:37work yeah i think that imposter syndrome is probably you know enacting is something that a lot of actors wrestle with uh a sense i shouldn't really be here and you're all going to find out that i don't really know what i'm doing all that kind of thing but you know you had you had the knowledge didn't you you had the technique and the knowledge but just something was just getting in the way and then in that moment of surrender oh magic happens it's like it's like you don't do it you know it just

34:07happened you just let it happen you let go of the reins yeah i mean i think don't you think i feel like all of my best moments best work has been those moments where i just let go and and something else you know i don't know what's happening whether it's on stage i mean i mentioned that play i did in uh up north it was you know true west and it was in lancaster like early on i was working with you uh and it was a real experience of every night i just let go and just you know it was very free because it was a local theater it wasn't going to be reviewed at the time you know i was able to and

34:40had a really great actor work with the director really allowed us every night we just was in the moment and just you know i'd done the work but every night was able to just let go and suddenly i kind of could see what malkovich was doing you know i suddenly was like you know i'm not saying malkovich but there was freedom you know by just letting go of of it all and in all the work subsequently where i've thought that that i'm happy with has been the moments i knew that something was happening and it wasn't me you know i wasn't doing the work really well it takes real courage and

35:13fearlessness i think to to be able to do that to let you see give it up in that sense because like you're saying if you know if it's a regional theater production or amdram or something there's very little at stake it's very easy to be like i'm just going to give this one up but yeah if you're on a spielberg set in an elaborate eight minute take that's something else that's kind of the zenith of of filmmaking really isn't it to have that pressure to then be able to have the the courage and the the calmness of mind to be like i'm going to let this go like that takes real courage i think yeah i mean it is and it is harder i mean i knew really early on when i did cold

35:46mountain and we were only there for a few days i thought in a weird way jude law has it easier you know he was the lead in that one you know he knows the director he's worked with them in three other films whatever he's there every day he's working you know this is his film as it were and i thought there's a in a weird way he has more freedom and or there's more availability to be free for someone like you know me and for many actors that be listening to it you know you're suddenly got to go do one day on a tv series or or in a film and and that's a much harder and if you can

36:18master that when you go and do you know the lead in a indie film or whatever you're gonna be great if you can do one much harder to go do one day or two days on a series or a movie than anything else that's the hardest thing to do you know if you can do that you can do anything yeah well i remember when i taught actions to your group and we would we would do our exercise we'd each be working on different actions and then we'd do them around the group and we'd do them to each other do you

36:49remember we'd sit in a circle and we do play around with actions together and i remember you were such a as you you know as you you genuinely come across as i know you are is very gentle there's a real sort of softness to you that you know you're very polite and you and then jordan we i got them to act actions like i attack i threaten i warn and what came out of richard was just this energy this

37:24terrifying like it was whoa you know that was really powerful when you do those those kind of actions and i know that you know looking at your body of work those characters that want to be powerful to have control or they're threatening or they're menacing in some way or they're torturing the person um you're a real expert at those actions you know at doing that but it's such a contradiction because

37:58you're not like that in life at all i don't i mean you know obviously i don't i don't i don't live under the same room but i know i think well i think well hopefully my wife would agree i don't uh it's the mild-mannered janitor turns into hong kong phooey no i think maybe because i can i can get i can get it out at work um i remember in hannibal rising i had to eat a child and then i would come home and uh and read my kids you know bedtime

38:28stories and i remember thinking that's just messed up well yeah well talking about that that you've obviously played so many parts that have such depths of murkiness and darkness is is there any part that's really stuck with you emotionally that you've you've really had to shirk after the production's finished and all the filming's is over and if so how did you how did you get rid of that i mean i've never had trouble like getting you know letting a character go i mean partly because i you know i'll move on to the next one

39:02so something i gotta start creating another character and uh that makes it easier um yeah you know i i don't really feel that i mean there was a character i did in uh rob zombie for movie uh three from hell called foxy who was quite fun to play this sort of wild redneck kind of character and occasionally my wife would say to me please put foxy away you know we don't you don't need to bring him out so he would occasionally come out i guess i didn't realize it she goes we don't need

39:36foxy today you just put him away um put foxy back in his box exactly exactly but um yeah i did a movie barbarian a couple years ago yes yeah and that was probably the even though you never see him do anything it's all kind of heard he was probably the most horrendous character i'd ever played in terms of what he did do it's the context isn't i guess yeah you don't see it on screen but it's you because you know the things you've seen before in the film that's that's an incredible film to be

40:08part of like the the way it subverts you kind of uh takes you by surprise yeah but yeah i remember remember seeing that that was that was incredibly creepy that was very because i did a lot of work and and i researched a lot and people that did kidnap women it was not fun and i did the pictures and the impressions and the work because i mean for me a lot of it yeah i really believed i have to create as full a life as i can in the time that i have to prepare uh for a character got both what

40:40he wants but very much what his life has been especially these characters that are uh shall we say not very well mentally it's very important for me to understand why they're not you know i mean in some cases it can be chemical but a lot of times it it's because of their upbringing i have to make choices and create these pictures create these lives i build a kind of swimming pool of pictures to live in and the more time i have the greater depth of the swimming pool um and i do that a lot so when i was building them for barbarian it was really difficult because it was not nice and um i was

41:18having crazy dreams and you know so when that's the case you're almost i'm like kind of relieved when it's over it's like that one was was a difficult one it was only a week's filming pretty much but it was intense um was that because of of to truthify you know the horror of the character's desire to to torture or take revenge or whatever thing is that you then have to create the trauma that's created that desire if you see what i mean is it that is it the is it the sort of the visceral aggression

41:51that is can be distasteful or is it creating the trauma that's behind it a mixture both i mean what you have to create the trauma absolutely in this case you know why the person in all the cases a lot of at least in many of them um of the characters that i play evil characters for want of a better word um to create the the life history that has made him behave in a certain way so that often involves

42:21terrible traumas all kinds of things and using active imagination to do it which of course you know is very powerful experience and therefore useful as an actor and also to create the pictures of what he's done you know in the case of barbarian he's done this a lot so what he's done it's really unpleasant you know to the women uh this is one of the you know we sort of touched a bit you know before when we were chatting about you know what makes a good evil character or how do you play evil

42:51what is a good character's evil i i think one of the reasons why i don't find it difficult why i'm able to do it is i had a kind of revelation around the time we were working together that uh given my face that i'd probably be playing a few baddies but you have to really look at your own thinking that stops you from truly going there emotionally mentally with your pictures most of us as humans

43:22will stop which is natural we kind of have something that we shouldn't think like that even if it's a little thoughts little things but you have to be willing to it's i think personally i think it's my responsibility in a way as an artist as an actor without sounding like too wanky playing these roles because there's a function for these roles in these films and it's my responsibility to fully go there you know i have to go there and i have learned to or just i'm able to just block off to not have those thoughts that are stopping me from going there you know consciousness helps allows me

43:57to think thoughts and allow my imagination to take me to places that are really disturbing i mean really disturbing and with with actions like i enjoy you know and yeah yeah you know i take pleasure and you know well that's when the character becomes really dangerous isn't it i saw that that clip from 31 where you're you know you're just relishing the torture but you could get the sense of that character has experienced the trauma themselves that they want you know there's a basic rule of thumb that

44:34i use is that is that in psychology people just basically want you to feel how they feel so if someone thinks that life is lonely they want you to think life is lonely if someone thinks life is hard they want you to think life is hard so it's a bit it's not it doesn't hold up completely but it's a good rule of thumb and so whatever your character wants to make someone feel like that must be what you feel like yeah i agree i've always traumatized i've felt that that yeah um so you do got to create you know create that trauma as well as in yourself and it really has to you know be there you

45:09have to really use your imagination to go there as well as you know in the case of doomhead you're talking about 31 you know i have to do a whole history of and i did and i had a lot of fun fun creating his history and you know what makes a great performance you know you you're asking uh one time before we were talking about what makes a great performance in my opinion or when they're human they're real so many i think villains are you know mustache twirling in some kind of way now you

45:42know and true villains if you want a better word are you know the human beings they're not just driven to be evil for the sake of it i mean it's just you know maybe in james bond or something but there's a real three-dimensional human being when that's graded and that's you know 30 31 doomhead could have just been a kind of cartoon character instead i built a whole history of pictures and impressions and and from very specific purposes and super purpose and um self-events and and these

46:14things that you know we studied to make him who he was so that he could be fully rounded and i think that was a big breakthrough for me i saw that character and it resonated very big in the arc um and i think it's because he was real you know there's a lot of great horror characters when why they don't he does i don't know it wasn't a hugely popular film he's a very famous uh and wonderful horror film director who does have a huge following but that was not necessarily one of his most popular films but that character just exploded and i think it exploded because of you know the work that john and

46:48i you know do that there was a human being as twisted and as broken nuts as the character was but there was something there and people you know i think people respond to that does that make sense oh absolutely we we did did didn't we jordan we did a whole episode in the first season of this podcast on acting villains yeah oh yeah and very much the the you know vactangoff eugene vactangoff's there are no evil angry or aggressive people only unhappy ones is the kind of key to that absolutely i think that's so

47:22true i mean you do i did once play a true psychopath and uh he was uh in a mental institution for a tv series i did and um you know he was absolutely 100 psychopath and you know there are certain things that maybe are inherited to a degree you know this sort of complete lack of empathy i mean it's fascinating to look at that but ultimately it still fits in that statement there that they are all still yeah happy is it something unbalanced it's like it's uh one of the things is um that we looked at

47:56there is is when the amygdala is smaller in the brain and so and the amygdala is the that which can assess future outcomes you know so so when people have a reduced amygdala they're more reactive interesting and they can't filter you know what's you know what the emotion that comes up they have to sort of act on it they're not in control of it so there is a there is a neurological aspect to it as well yeah i think yeah i think that helps you guess not judge the character having that empathy and

48:28understanding where the characters come from whether it is trauma in their past or it's a physical reaction to some kind of chemical in their brain that that kind of bypasses i think for a lot of actors they have the brakes like you say there's something that stops them from going to that place because they find it hard to empathize they find it hard to to try and humanize a monster but i guess is it is it then is it the technique that saves you there is that is that what stops you from from staying in that darkness is because you are able to go i'm going to create all the pictures and then you're going to put it in a box and then be done with it once and once the filming's over yeah

48:58then probably just the human desire to be sane i think it's like i think it's um yeah i'm just ready for it to go when it's over you know i'm just i enjoy it doing it but then you know i enjoy it a lot but when when it's when it's over then i'm ready to you know let let them go yeah do you ever think that you'd like to do a you know like um you know a comedy or a farce or just something completely opposite do you ever get to do any of those i mean i was in death of stalin which is

49:33you know very yeah yeah now they come along occasionally definitely um and and it's fun i mean that was great fun to work because he works in a very different kind of way um as a director and um done some lighter stuff i mean i played merlin in a film where i was you know wizardy character um so they do and i i and yeah i i'm i actually just love it you know i don't go i want to play bad guys please only give me bad guys i i just love working i just think a lot to do with just

50:05physically how i look and also you just have the thing where oh it's on blue doomhead then let's have do you know so that naturally that that work is going to come because somebody's seen some other work i've done i don't ever get tired people say to get tired playing but i don't because they're all so different you know they're they all and they may look slightly the same to you i don't know i don't even have to time i don't watch anything i don't watch my things i just but to me they're so different like you know doomhead is definitely very different than the guy in barbarian i mean they're just different people i'm totally different they live in different they're just whole

50:37stories i'm creating my head and purposes and they have different actions and they have different so for me it's just human beings i just tend to be people with some issues but yeah so you've never had to resist the temptation to kind of because for some actors they would want to do something completely different but i guess yeah it's probably a very healthy purpose to have that you just you're ready to move on to the next thing that's as great as an actor you don't think oh god not this again you know what i mean um i just i because it's so different it's another challenge it's like

51:09okay how am i doing this and there are differences and they play different um what's the word what they're asked what they bring to the the meaning of the film you know it's very different to know how they right yeah different functions no the function thank you that's the word the function of doomhead in in 31 is very different than the function of a movie i did recently called last stop in yuma county i mean his function was very different even though they're both not nice people um i never think of

51:40them as like the same or i never worry about time and none of that bothers me you can give me a comedy give me whatever it's all the same process for me yeah so should we have a look at that there's a clip last stop in yuma yeah that so this is so tell us a bit about that so to just to lead us into it what's the this is a new is it this one has it been released it hasn't come out here yet it was released in the u.s uh at the beginning of the summer uh it's a small independent film tiny budget

52:10uh it uh it started out a wonderful director uh sent me a letter just asking me if i would read it and be in it uh he sent letters to all the people he wanted it and all of them said yes wonderful cast of actors that he got together one location fantastic he's not this is his first feature um he didn't have hardly any money i spoke to him a couple years ago i said absolutely just keep me in you know let me know what's going on and they got loads of money at one point and they

52:41lost all that money you know because one they pull out you know it's very hard to put a movie together as john knows um eventually a friend of actually someone i know as well um he sold his house to finance it a friend in la and so he was a producer on it um and so he made it for you know less than a million and we all did it for you know lunch pretty much um and uh shot it in a couple weeks and it came out in early summer it won best picture at sitches which is the biggest

53:16sort of genre film festival in the world it won a bunch of other awards it got a hundred percent and i think or 99 maybe the one dodgy review on rotten tomatoes uh it was just a it's incredible and the director has gone from no one knew his name to now directing the new evil dead film i mean he's a lovely man it couldn't happen to a better person um his his life changed overnight and it's been you know i'm really proud of it as a film i think it's one of my favorite performances of what

53:47i've done and we can talk more about that in terms of that and work with john yeah so should we should we should we run the clip now this is a clip basically i it's a diner everybody is trapped in the diner um because there's no gas at the gas station so they're all waiting for the gas truck to arrive which we know isn't going to arrive because we saw the opening clip that the gas truck has crashed off the road there's a whole you know handful of people including a knife salesman and the waitress and they know that there'd been a bank robbery me and my brother had robbed a bank and we've pulled

54:18up um and the knife salesman figured out that because the description of the car that we're the bank robbers and uh at this point i've twigged that they've figured out who we are so i'm about to sit them both down and tell them what's what put your hands down what's in the box cheap kitchen knives

54:51you're a knife salesman normally i just slit your throat and steal your car but fortunately for you i figured that fruity little number outside doesn't have any yes correct no i mean yeah where's your car my husband dropped me off the fat man at the gas station does he have a car who lives here who lives here he runs the motel next door and he stays in one of the rooms

55:24huh and no cook not today shit i guess we're stuck here till that truck arrives which means you two better pay close attention to what i'm about to tell you if you're trying to think stupid i'll shoot you in the face understood good

55:56so here's what we're gonna do you're gonna go about your day just like any other day you're gonna keep our coffee mugs full and when we're ready to eat you're gonna take our order with a big fat fucking smile on your face if anybody comes in here find out if they got gas got it got it good and you're just gonna sit here in silence and play with that little puzzle

56:31as soon as that truck as soon as that truck gets sure we'll be on our way now i suggest you pull yourself together and get back behind that counter not a fucking word

57:01good boy so that was a clip from the last stop in yuma county what really strikes me about that clip is i mean it does look fantastic like you're saying it's such a small budget if you compare that to your monologue from 31 which is primarily close up on you which is really menacing you especially when you're staring down the lens of the camera it's amazing how much menace you can get without even really being seen for the first half of that clip

57:34for those of you who can see the clip it's you're not really on the screen you're seeing the character's reaction to you but it's amazing how much how much you can still convey the same menace without having your face in extreme close up like it was in 31 yeah i was worried about that because he told me you know he'd been thinking about that shot for years that he wanted it to be in the one take and i was worried that without the cutaways you know is it really going to work he also did film you know the standard way of doing it

58:06just to have the safety of editing that if it didn't work sure um but it was you know that one take i just thought you know is it going to work i just have to trust it you know backing up a bit um there's a lot in that it was a real accumulation of you know 30 years working and studying with john 20 years earlier and that and all the things we've spoken about already um in some ways that whole film that might work in that film

58:36is very much uh kind of accumulation of all of that um and we're talking about function in a film or a play and i really think that's very important to first you know in many ways see what is the character's function in this piece and when we and he initially talked to me about the film you know two years before we're in this idea the character was going to be somebody not a regular bad guy he wasn't going to be like the other character he's going to be somebody who's sort of a fish out of water this is his first time

59:07maybe he's doing it because he needs to get money for his daughter's operation or you know that kind of thing and he's saying lines from other movies you know to try and look like a baddie you know and it was like i was like okay this is cool and he was very much thought that that was why i wanted to do it because it wasn't another baddie you know like i said i didn't mind i was like okay and then fast forward two years and i'm reading the script more and more and looking at it and knew we had the money ready to shoot i'm starting to really work on the character and i'm reading the script and i'm thinking

59:37i don't think that's going to work and then i'm getting also the man plays does i have a brother in it he's this kind of wild character and the guy playing that wonderful actor named nicholas logan was he was rewriting his lines and really building this wacky crazy character and i thought we got him and then you're going to have him you know ultimately i came to the conclusion that he has to be terrifying terrifying for there to be any sense of tension

1:00:08in that diner for an hour and a half this character has to be the most terrifying character i've probably played in some ways or at least up there so i thought i gotta let the director know you know we're shooting in two weeks or something so they'd had a read-through a couple days before so we arranged to have a chat and i got on the phone and the first thing he said to me he said i gotta tell you something i gotta say something to you and i said oh i gotta say something to you you know i said you go first and he said i think the character has to be terrifying we just did a read-through

1:00:39and i realized i said yeah that's what i was going to tell you so that was the first thing is the function of that character literally had to change as we looked more and more at the script then uh the other thing i wanted to do was really achieve something that i've been sort of obsessed about you know we talk about like what you know what makes a great villain you know to me some of the best villains are incredibly still i believe stillness is very important in all in acting you know meditation is immensely important to me

1:01:10you know and john said you try and meditate twice a day you know i used to do it once but with john i was like no i'm gonna do it and we meditate you know twice a day and so it was to create real true stillness in a character and for me it's some is with purposes to have no obstacle to the purpose achievement or one of the things with john i don't think we had this with sam but like happiness is being powerful as opposed to like i want to be powerful happiness is being powerful is a sense of

1:01:41for me a truly still baddie whatever has already knows that purpose is achieved there's no obstacle at that point which is easier said than done because as human beings we have these obstacles i want to impress the director little purposes of i want to impress the director i want people to love this performance i want to be famous i want to be long i want to be on richard's purposes right not the car they create obstacles and those obstacles sneak into the performance so you can't be fully still right so you have to really it's taken me

1:02:1120 something years right so i've had moments of it for sure but really sort of obsessed with this level of stillness where you have achieved the purpose in essence in your head as a character he knows that there is nothing anyone else can do if i want to slit your throat i will just slit your throat you have to be very aware and so again consciousness helps to be aware of this thought or i want to impress with my stillness you know like that one you know there's a million little demons i want to be seen

1:02:42to be still i know well that was the purpose i had before i met you john i did a movie i won't name it actually because i don't want to it was my second film and i was definitely had the purpose i want to be seen to be still and it was the worst performance of my entire life by far i i pretty much gave up for two years because i couldn't bear it it was so bad um but it was that purpose i want to be

1:03:12seen to be still which made me look about as wooden as frozen and it was freaking unbelievable it was awful but yeah but that the stillness in that clip is like it's terrifying because when you're still it's like you're grounded in being and it's the character is this determined to do what they want and it's got this force of being behind it um the opposite to that in 31 that's scary because the

1:03:43character's unhinged because the character isn't connected in being there's a manicness about it there's a the character you can the character's trauma is there and that makes it so it's complete opposite one is they're very very concentrated and still in the moment and the other is that well they're mad they're not grounded in being at all and that's what's so dangerous yeah and i you know i think and i was thinking about that because you know one of my favorite performances of a baddie

1:04:14was um heath ledger in uh in joker right i thought that was a really really amazing performance and and this character obviously is wacky as hell and uh i think that there underneath all of that though there is still that stillness you know you you i think in some ways you need to start with that i think all acting ultimately should really start with that because that's a place of freedom and go back to what we started about talking is that you know if you've really got that

1:04:44rooted that kind of stillness then you know even with 31 there was a stillness there that then you can go from that with the all of the trauma that makes him that you know the self-events and purposes and history and pictures that i've created that that allows you to be mad as opposed to this character but it all has that same kind of fundamental root of stillness which is why you know working with you in the meditation and and and and looking at my own thinking and um consciousness

1:05:15and everything that we've been speaking about is crucial i think to all acting whether you're a baddie or a gooddie um you know love that guy um javier bardine's that character um in oh in no country for old men yeah no he found a real stillness in that some with um anthony hopkins in um oh in science of the lambs yeah do you know what it's funny all those three performances i remember especially i remember being in the cinema seeing the dark night and seeing heath ledger's performance for the

1:05:45first time and i was almost like i was scared watching it because it was i felt like anything was possible like anything could have could you could do anything in that moment whatever it was whenever he was on screen and it's the same thing with javier bardem and no country for me the same thing with it with anthony hopkins there's a real unpredictability that they think they can they could put and do anything on screen and i don't know what's going to come next and that's really thrilling i think it's the same thing i think in this clip that any actor could do a myriad of things to try and get that across and they could overact they could add extraneous

1:06:16things but it is it's that stillness it's stripping it down to what is not just the function of the character but how do you how do you embody that in a way that is truthfully and i think yeah that was like you say it's an accumulation of your work definitely you can see that well i call it three well it's three dimensional acting because what you've got is like the first layer is like the character's you know purposes and actions what they're what they want and what they're doing there might be another layer over the top of that that they're showing something else but there's what they they want and

1:06:46behind that is what's making them have that you know that's the trauma that's the that the the feeling of lack or or whatever that's behind that but then behind that if you look into the actor's eyes into a great actor's eyes is the stillness is that is that and that's what gives the actor i believe that their sense of depth and being you know it's