Andrew Scott | Full Q&A | Oxford Union

[Music] [Music] well thank you so much for joining me this week hello everyone promised you a big crowd room every day so you started acting after an incredibly young age at only eight years old yeah do you remember what it was at first buck - interest in drama and acting I think I was really shy I didn't really speak at all when I was younger I was very shy and I think for a lot of actors it's a way of coming out of yourself a little bit so I used to I kind of enrolled my a friend on my mom when one was a teacher and her one of the teachers in her school her daughter had come to these drama classes on a Saturday afternoon and I went along and I was really shaking and everything but something happened a weird thing that I still can't really explain that I felt not shy when I was able to get up and actually it's kind of a new medium to express yourself yeah I think I think it was a little bit and and it does it does overcome shyness a little bit I'm still a little bit shy I mean like I'm less shy otherwise and but yeah I think that's what's what's what sort of started ish okay and then how did you go about developing the passion well I went when it kind of came to the crunch time like around from going to university I went to quite an academic school in Dublin and I'd done this sort of thing as a sort of not a secret but as a certainly as a sideline and there wasn't I didn't play rugby or I didn't play soccer or all those kind of stuff so I was kind of separate from my school I was an all-male school and and then I applied and got into Trinity in Dublin Trinity College in Dublin I just studied a degree in drama but it wasn't for me I left after her about eight months just because it wasn't an academic it was I was used to I was used to it being a playful sort of subject you know and it was never academic and writing essays about drama and all that stuff wasn't for me I think for other disciplines within the industry I think it could have been okay but for for me acting is about good of maintaining the child in you a little bit and so I left there and like kind of I had done if I'd done a film just before I left school that kind of came out which allowed me to get an audition at the Abbey Theatre in Dublin which is our National Theatre and jam so I got there and I just kind of worked from there and I was only I was only I just turned 19 when I when I went to the Abbey Theatre and so I had a great start you know it's kind of extraordinary to me that I got all those opportunities you know when I was still a teenager and but I meant them it actually meant that I didn't have a sort of I've never had a I think sometimes in drama schools I don't know if anybody is interested or has gone to drama schools here but the thing that I I'm glad that I I didn't have to take on board I suppose is sort of a pack mentality because I think what can what can happen with the wonderful thing about being in the theatre industry or the film industry is that you can do with each project is it it it is a completely different atmosphere so if you're doing a play that's about cats you have to hang out with loads of cats are you know and or else if there's a play that's about it's a working-class play or it's important by different races or different sexualities or different male and female so that each thing that there's no sort of socio-economic group that you and you hang out with them sometimes what can happen I think even in in college and we're at university or in drama drama schools that you have a sort of false environment where everybody is 19 and sometimes it can feel competitive and that you're competing against these other people thus Momoa and I think competition in in the industry I mean I mean it's a very competitive industry but it's a let's sort of disallowed me from being competitive because I point I think that's really one of the most difficult things but going into such an insecure profession which is that um you have to kind of forage for work and people are like why is that person doing that wants to you know comparing yourself to other people can be really insidious and so I think I didn't I just had my own very individual path and I'm kind of grateful for that knowing and how did you find how have you how have you found dealing with them kind of the competitive nature of the industry I just don't I just refused to involve myself with it a bit I really like actors actually and I think that's kind of important I think sometimes when you read interviews with actors the girl will look at her for any actor friends and you know all my friends are and I think we'll get some you know the people you work with you know so you work with people you're saying you don't you know you know venire Elizabeth some sort of virtue not to hang out with actors and you know of course there are some vain terrible actor people but there's varying terrible of lots of different types of people and I think the best actors you know you're in you're in the empathy game you're you're trying to imagine what it's like to be somebody else and so the good ones know that the best way to get at that is to actually not have to act and so you actually genuinely be interested in other people and so ya think actors are really generous really fun sexy people a ringing endorsement they're bringing so how have you found the incredible fan following that has kind of include after you joined the cast of Sherlock yeah pretty cool yeah yeah really cool as I said I've been I was you know 10 or 12 years into into being an actor before I was in a show that anybody had really seen you know and I'm really glad I really glad I was and when I was I was I was gonna say was there's a really disgusting and I think attitude towards fandoms and what it means to be a fan of like a television show like if you're into Game of Thrones or Sherlock or whatever the hell you're into you and I think there's a there's a whiff of bullying about it in the media and I'm always asked by journalists have you ever had any freaky experiences with fans and of course I have but I like you know of course but in sport grown men go and dress up in their team's colours and got incredibly emotional and supporters invested in it and they talked about in they're passionate about it and no one bats an eyelid and then input if there's if you applied the same thing to people who are fond of TV shows I find it what kind of something a bit gross and just because it's not a sort of it's not the people who run the world who tend to become devoted to that or to cosplay or whatever it is that people people do they're sort of in the line of fire yeah you and what it felt like to when you were first cast for the show yeah I I do or I didn't really forecasts the success of the show I knew it would be successful because Sherlock is a very famous brand and it was really really well-written but everybody was terrified that people wouldn't really take to the idea of Sherlock being a you know selling it in a modern-day setting and then when we did the Victorian episode people were really upset that they messed with the format of this that's a sign of success in a way but and yeah I kind of did it I had this little small part at the end of series one and I was terrified I for some stupid reason I hadn't seen it I watched it with the 11 other the 11 million people who were watching Sherlock at the time and there were articles in the paper about who's gonna be Moriarty I was just like oh Rudy was I was like oh my god it's me and I hadn't even seen my performance I didn't know what so when in that swimming pool scene when ap I was like what's this gonna be like and I hated it you know I saw it and I thought oh at the way any perform I tend not to kind of look at stuff that I'm in anymore I find it very hard it's it's kind of like well you know when you listen to yourself on someone else's answering machine or something you think oh except do you have the way you look - and then so then it it came out and it was huge and it was quite divisive my my that I think people kind of wanted it to be something else that it wasn't and you know people some people just didn't go for it and some people adored it and I I was quite pleased with that I I was by always think if you're gonna do something worthwhile artistically you should put your autograph on it do what you want to do and so so much of our drama and art now I think is a little bit derivative and I think you've got to do something and not be - to be respectful but not too reverent and then you can put your own stamp on it so I was glad that it was divisive in a way although I was it was my first experience with online opinion which now I have just I just avoid because it was genuinely upsetting because people hide behind and you know user names and stuff like that and they can say whatever the hell they want and they say they go right to the heart of stuff that you you you can be really really vulnerable like I rang mark gagis the the producer and writer of it and I said you know if you want to let me go I totally understand and he was like oh I should have told you don't go on the internet and because people are so full of opinion and so now I'm just I'm just wildly sterling it I mean people would say whatever the hell they wants to mean and I'm like yeah I heard it before you know so it's in a way it toughens you up yeah how did you find dealing with it to begin with how did you cope with it it's really important for me as an actor because I suppose I I think human being but but it's very it was very I think that amount of time that I had to myself was really important to be able to look outwards because that's your job as an actor is to be able to observe in some way and I don't want that to go and I think you can you know success as an actor or often is mistakenly attributed to how famous you are and some of the most successful actors in the world are actually not that famous they can walk down they can have a career in theatre and nobody would ever bother them but people attribute your successes as an actor to your recognizability and um to a certain extent that can be true because you know work leads to other work and you have to have a certain degree of profile but that's not the aim of the game so I suppose to be able to hold on to it was just to be able to choose the the work and - I was used I was used to be to being in being private because nobody I didn't have to do much press or anything like that but it's to be quite fastidious I'm quite ferocious about my own my own privacy and that takes I think if I had been younger a younger actor or if I'd been in something that was really successful like a big it franchise movie when I was 21 I think it can be really damaging because people are full of opinion and it's hard to branch out of that yeah do you miss working on Sherlock no I don't miss it not for any any any reason other than I think it's important to do what you want to do and you know it's a very is a very famous show and there are a certain amount of stories and that you want to tell and you know having done a lot of different kinds of work before it's such as it was such a singular very distinct part and you know you get offered sort of more types of villains sort of watered-down versions of Moriarty sense and that's okay I got it and I've done some of them actually if I'm honest but I the great pleasure of acting for me has been to to to explore different sides of my own personality you know and that's really important to not just play extreme characters because there's drama and every single person's life here whether that's quiet drama or or just because somebody isn't particularly colourful and in their personality doesn't mean that there isn't a story in there that's really worth telling and I find those stories very compelling yeah so moving away from Sherlock then and on to your acting more generally I think your absolute incredible in Pride Matthew Walker's movie the true story about an alliance between the miners in the gay community during the nineteen before strike but have you ever felt the need to shy away from gay roles for fear of being typecast no III haven't I think I think it's um let me try and try and answer that honestly I say this all the time and but being gay is not a virtue it's not a flaw but it's not a virtue either so playing a gay character is just it's any more than playing a straight character you don't say oh I'm gonna go for this straight character now it's like what is the what are the attributes of the character and I have been quite specific about the the types of roles I play and there always come down to to the the write the writing really and what was interesting about pride was that and all the lead characters were gay we're 15 of them so you couldn't say oh I play the gay one in that because everybody was playing the game one and and so you're able to say oh look that person is distinct from that person in the same the same way we do in in life you don't I don't I don't consider I don't consider my sexuality to be particularly interesting what what I may have developed as a result of being gay like being I think maybe how it's helped me is I suppose it's made me a little more tolerant and but I think at other times it's probably made me more selfish at certain times in my life so the attributes that you may develop of being gay can be virtuous or the opposite of virtuous but they aren't they aren't they aren't and for me they aren't who I want to have sex with is not something that you can really play okay how have you found being onstage compared to being on TV and film I I love it you know it's definitely something you're much more in control of it's hard we did 150 performances of Hamlet last year and it's three hours 45 yeah and there's 1,500 lines and you have to do eight shows a week and you're not paid well I always think you know people would be shocked if they heard what theater actors are paid not that there's the you know I feel incredibly grateful for it but it's hard work really hard work but it's totally exhilarating and I do believe that Hamlet is the greatest play ever written or arguably one of the greatest plays ever written an extraordinary part and the reason I find it so and moving is that sometimes if you're doing a new player a play that's maybe just less magic after 70 performances and you've stretched out the plasticine as much as you can you think it's not really much more I can do with this whereas with that play there's just it just just you just learn new things about it every night and it was extraordinary and one of the main one of the main reasons I wanted to do it was to to try and speak Shakespeare in in a way that's in a new way I suppose and that's something I spoke to Rob like a lot about who's our brilliant director about speaking Shakespearean in a way that's at least attempting to try and make it the way we speak now sometimes it's intoned and there's a real reverence in by Shakespeare that I find makes me angry because all evidence to me and points towards a man who was alive and was an entertainer and wanted everybody to see it he didn't want it to be put in a glass box it should be for everybody so we wanted to to make it as I kind of hate the word accessible but in its truest form I wanted it to be and accessible and we wanted there to be cheap tickets so that it wasn't just drivers picking up people in fur coats outside the West End and the people could could actually afford it and I think and it's gonna be on TV I think it's important that it's on TV and it's modern and it's all that kind of stuff and so I was very gratified by the whole experience and I'm totally addicted to to the way he because it's really really active all but for example the line what think you aren't what think you want he would have written so it's it's the equivalent of us saying it isn't as as opposed to it is not but what's happened weirdly is that what think you want becomes a sort of weird way of speaking Shakespeare that's sort of weird it's just not it's it's making too much of a distancing yourself is saying there's a way of speaking Shakespeare and that I find really troubling and kind of dangerous so do you think that Shakespeare still relevant to the modern world today and so how do you think how do you think well we'll listen and extraordinarily during when we were doing homeless Prince Harry spoke about mental health which I thought was extraordinary about about a young man and for I do think with young men it's really troubling at the moment the amount of suicide they did the suicide rates among among young men and this is a man who's grieving but he's not allowed to to grieve he's not allowed it's like your feelings are not as important as other things and he's been lied to and then something becomes rotten in the state of Denmark and the amount of people who could I want to people to be able to both wanted Robin are a little cast want to people young people to be able to see themselves rather than rather than seeing some guy who's a sort of brilliant warrior and prince and sort of is invulnerable because vulnerability is really difficult I think particularly for for young men and I believe ulnar ability is the thing that makes us genuinely connect with each other you know particularly in this age of social media where we present no vulnerability it's a PR exercise we can filter our pictures and we can we just advertise our lives and that may impress other people but it doesn't connect us I think when you connect with somebody it's not because you go I've got my life is amazing it's amazing as well it's not how you actually you can have a superficial connection with someone in that in that sense but when you really connect with someone with it's when you say do you know what I'm pissed off here I'm scared I'm people coat you know I I am as well I'm nervous are you nervous yeah you know and then you go RT I can talk to connected with someone else rather than I'm intimidated by someone else and I think I think I'm all for social media I think it can work work wonders but the whole whole just self advertising I find couldn't make people very isolated so that's why I think it's them still relevant and so coming back to kind of the acting industry do you think that there is because that amount of pressure on actors to appear glamorous and I pay that let maintain that social image on social media platforms yeah there is there is I suppose a pressure but you know I've never been ashamed as an actor to say that I'm an artist because people think oh I don't sound like I don't know what to say wanky I don't this 50 people think I'm you know I thought I'm an artist you're like you are an artist BTS onus unless what and that's what you're interested in is isn't something else and so if like they have with me asked me to be you know to have a social media have a Twitter account because that make you more castable just say no end of conversation nobody's gonna any kind of person who's gonna say you need to have a follower of follower over a million followers in order to be cast by a studio picture you go what kind of studio picture is this do you want to be in that maybe you do then but if you want to do stuff that is genuinely progressive artistically then you just say no in the same way if you your biggest power as an actor is to just say no but I want to do that don't want to do it there's nothing that anybody your agent your your manager your publicist whatever the hell those people say you just say I don't want to do it you don't have to I would prefer and I how I've done jobs that I'm so grateful for in my 20s and taking jobs that have no profile but they've taught me how to act kind of turned down jobs thus and would have been bigger profile but I but for me would have closed doors rather than open open them for me because I think you know you it's your it's for me it's my work and it's very and I think maybe because personally I just wanted to be able to express Who I am that's to me my job a little bit and I'm not saying I'm not saying that all the jobs have been good because they haven't and sometimes you've got to release the grip a little bit you know just go on this it's okay to be in a fun movie you know but it's a balance like all things yeah do you have a preference between the big Hollywood roles and they're more independent ones now adjunct actually I've been that James Bond film was really cool it was I think we killed you think wow Here I am in mi5 and there's all these fantastic people and is it as nourishing no not really but it was really fun and I think I'm happy to do those I wouldn't want to do them exclusively but yeah it's - for me it's to kind of keep it all mixed up like the idea of going and doing a play now and what makes me physically sick I think oh you know yeah yeah do you think the independent films allow for better plots yeah definitely I'm more interesting characters I hate TV speak I hate when people say things like there's just something I need to do first or I knew I'd find you here how did you know oh that's a way of talking that nobody and people have an unbelievable capacity with wordplay everyday folk whether you're working class middle class upper class play the Boyd people construct sentences or how they express themselves it's fascinating to me the way they what they say like in Ireland people say would you would you be actually making me a cup of tea would you be after making me a cup of tea that's what people say like what you want me to be after having made use of what people oh yeah and that's the way I find that language really really exciting I always have so so I think about independent film yeah about any kind of film so that independent voices I don't think for the most part this is a sweeping generalization people may disagree with this but I think people's favourite films are not big franchise films they're sort of slightly Purse films that are sort of a little bit obscure that God that really spoke to me rather than because rather because they are tailored for an individual and into avid individual voice tailored for another individual voice and so you go my god that was for me rather than for a mass audience so independent film to me is incredibly important because it literally helps people to live a better life and that's what I genuinely think the purpose of artists to me is is to help people go let's make my life a little bit better or a little bit more capable with so final question for me then before we go into the audience is what's your favorite film my favorite film is a paul thomas anderson film called punch-drunk love obviously very popular it's a brilliant film it's with Emily Watson and Adam Sandler being brilliant I absolutely love how - Paul Thomas Anderson's films but it's a romantic comedy of sorts and I like to sort of I hate the idea of high art and low art and stuff but it's really genuinely romantic because it's it's kind of wild but it's also really delicate and it's beautifully filmed and it's kind of romantic I love I think we're manta comedy when it's good can it's got a it makes it cool rather than sort of psycho in it so that's my favorite movie okay thank you so I think now's the perfect time to if not some question for the audience so if you've got a question raise your hand and we'll get a microphone over to you so if you go to the hand over there first yeah just like that hi hi and you've mentioned you really like role play and you see you have a lot of empathy have you ever considered going like behind the stage with acting specifically like screenwriting and stuff like that no I don't think I have the talent for screenwriting I'd be interested in directing theatre possibly because sometimes watching plays makes me want to scream just go you know I I just don't think I don't think it's good manners to bore an audience I think it's just like I don't think you'd be boring pardon I don't think you'd be boring thank you thank you very much appreciate that you know what I mean like that you just go because sometimes I think people go to the theater to be bored but genuinely do they think they go yeah I recognize they can just go for a nice little sleep rather than you know this is you know it's a safe I was not terribly in Sandri thing that was a trump said last night but you're our last year when when know as Mike Pence wasn't it when he he went to see Hamilton and he was and he said something like the theater should be a safe space and I thought not shouldn't theater isn't a safe space theater is a place that when you chat we should be challenged and may think you shouldn't going there to look at the costume I don't think okay should we gates you the hand just David that at the end of the rope just hey yeah hi you said you liked playing lots of different diverse roles and playing in lots of different types of film and TV program I wondered if you ever considered doing something really different like a musical I would love to be the musical but I can't say I know I can sort of sing a bit it's about confidence I think I could sort of talk saying huh I don't know I'd love to have a godus I really would it didn't stop Pierce Brosnan in Mamma Mia no that's that's possibly true that okay sure we gave to their having the red jump register over there yeah just bet first off I have to say absolutely loved your Hamlet last summer oh thank you very much um you talked a lot about bringing Shakespeare into the modern age and I was wondering if you'd ever consider doing a genderbent production of Shakespeare and which character you do if so oh I can so much trouble if I was taking over the three gray parts that there are I'd like to play that which part would I like to play um well lady M is a great part done we've done enough Machiavellian people and Rosalind is a great part but I don't really want to I don't really want to take over those parts I don't have some reason it like with so many of my female actor friends it's really hard with them what you get to do what you get to do even in in Hamlet Gertrude and a philia are really hard parts because they they just don't get to say the thing back they don't get to I'm Juliette and Jesse you played them find it find out really hard and we in the production we tried to make a virtue out of the fact that they don't get to speak in that play in that play um so I would have difficulty sort of taking over those parts just at the moment because they are few and far between for women they really are so I think the idea of seeing a female Richard the third is more interesting than that seeing me playing Juliet although sure you gave to you the hardest day with that and that green jumper hello hey I'm not in any way to suggest that you peaked but thank you next but obviously Hamlet is you know one of those parts do you have a wish list or I mean we're next it is it is it's it's a totally fair point it is a bit scary because then how might you just get to play everything you're always talking necessarily a good thing but but but you get to the grave the reason that's that that's such a famous part is because you it's every facet of your personality that's why it's really important to just I I find it hard to even differentiate between the character and me because I always think of it like a jug that you just pour in the the personality of the actor who's playing it so you're playing every single facet of your own you know personality you're you're a son you're a prince you're a lover you're you know a warrior you're what all those things so yet after having done it you do think where will I go that gives you something that's what's such a full meal that will be as as good as that and to be honest theatre theatre wise I think it'll just take me a while to just go what the next the next time the next step is but I I think it's hard talking about career ism in in an actor's life because you can wish away you can say this is what I should do and then then I should do that and then maybe this but actually it's to try and keep open to all the enormous possibilities you know if you look at see like well what Mark Ryan is created with Jerusalem this extraordinary sort of new play and a lot of my work has been with new plays and I'm very interested in and how do we it's someone here going to be and the new Shakespeare who is going to but who is got you know the but that the the sense of possibility about that is really exciting to me that a new writing in that and and to enable young writers to to really be thorough about writing something really genuinely brilliant so I'd love actually to to to do something that's to go back to play religious three again know exactly exactly thanks very much thank you should give to the hand just okay I was just wondering about process a now before you go on in a play there's any specific thing that you do in order to prepare yourself for the four hours that you're about to undertake is there anything any techniques that you personally have as an actor that allow you to to get in that headspace that you need in order to play someone else for me not really I think it's very important to have looked in the eyes of the actors that you're gonna be acting with before you've so that you're just making you just already seen each other and to meet each other before the play just to go out so you know what's going on a little bit of we had been helmet we had a 50-minute focus every time that was compulsory and I think that's very important and every actor will tell you do completely different things I like to sort of jump off the cliff a little bit so I kind of do like to mess around having done all the work and I it I started learning Hamlet three months before we ever started rehearsal so I knew it I mean it drove me crazy the learning of the line this is like it's just hard work there's no there's no so if you're really prepared at that you can sort of stretch out the language and you can go you don't have to hold on to if something is successful one night don't go okay what I have to do that the other night because I got a laugh last night I think that Hills theater because you're you're performing for a completely the atmosphere in this room you know depending on who's in it and who's speaking whatever will completely obviously depend on the personalities of everybody in the room so it's not it's not the same thing doing it every night so it's to try and be as alive as possible and I I don't know for me I like to just be as much me and then kind of go on the play very much for me was about love I said the word love before I went on because that to me is what the play is about and to try and not judge the play too much and to try and love the audience who can sometimes drive you crazy if they're you know if you're tired and somebody is doing their emails and the audience or whatever they want to do whatever just to sort of keep it centered and then I eat a lot of chocolate yeah so that's that but yeah for me it's playfulness you play a part you so it's - it's to go like if something goes wrong it just doesn't go wrong actually people love it when people things go wrong because it reminds you of the vulnerability of the of the artform you go this is so III with the soliloquies particularly that with harm that I wanted was the first thing I said to rob was I want to be able to look directly at the people rather than looking into a sort of light and pretending that we're not all here or that if a siren is going on outside that I can hear that rather than so that it's actually present and a producer with a very famous play like that that you D famous it by going we don't know what's going to happen next and so so much were so many revivals of of classic plays I think we want to do I wanted to be able to speak to the 15 year old in the audience you've never seen the play and sometimes the theater criticism they go they compare your Hamlet to someone else's Hamlet that they have seen at the RSC in 1910 I think you know that's all very well but the majority of people that's catering for a very specific audience and actually has no regard somebody who's twenty five doesn't care who nobody cares about that that means the theater is gonna die so you have to make it as dynamic rob's is a really brilliant thing about shakespeare witches don't make it like eating your vegetables it's not it's not it's not like a little girl wants to Shakespeare no because it's a good thing to do if something is exciting people will come and if it's boring they won't it's as simple as that and and if it's affordable if people can go I hate the idea that you have to pay 90 quid to go and see a play of course it's going to end up being for a very particular particular audience and that makes me really angry and it's up I think to the theatre producers and theater owners to go you don't have to you don't have to do this and actually some people actors who can negotiate that in their in their contracts and director thank you should we go to the hand in the corner over there hi so um I was lucky enough to see you in Hamlet last summer as well and want to say it was a incredible production as you touched on earlier I think one of the best things about your Hamlet was how you captured their like brooding melancholic kind of misunderstood aspect of his personality so I was wondering what sort of influences and inspirations you had to draw on for that and indeed was there a little bit of Moriarty in your Hamlet no there was with tragedies with tragedy I think well it's amazing what people's perceptions of a play up what a play or what the play is and what the end result of a plays which is you know that it's a faint extremely famous Shakespearean tragedy but there is no tragedy if there's no comedy there's no life if there's no dark art there's dark if there's no life there's no tragedy if there's no if there's no comedy so actually what what um I think a bit of a mistake can sometimes be made is that every single scene that is that you play is drowned in melancholy and he says he's wearing black clothes and but on our worst days we're not the funeral of somebody that we love there's some moments of levity in fact sometimes is even more so the idea that he that's why I said the word love but if he loves his uncle and his mother who's betrayed him and he loves Ophelia and he loved his diet and that we have a sense of what he was like before and that he's somebody who's trying to find the light rather than wallowing in the darkness then that the tragedy sort of plays itself so actually rather than focusing too much on the like if I'm honest could access easily I find it easy to access that but what what what I what we wanted was to be able to make the audience see the life in the in these people because otherwise if life is so miserable what is the great tragedy in dying there isn't one it's a release and I think that the reason that Rob's production was successful is that you could see that these people loved living and actually if there was a different way of communicating with within these within this family and they would have survived but they couldn't so actually it was the it was the wherever there was lightness and love and all the great things in life that if if we could really focus on that then I think it allowed people to feel oh I like life too and this is this is tragedy and you know because we will try and do that we all try and look for the love so I hope that makes sense she gave to the hands just in the front right there yeah so you've played some obviously really huge characters in your time Moriarty Hamlet how do you go about getting into that kind of character kind of extreme characters yeah I think it's about fun and playfulness again it's about the writing as well you can't make a great film out of a mediocre script it's sort of if if something ignites your imagination when you read it then let's got potential and if it doesn't you can act can ever can ever really get over that and so I think it's to be try not to be frightened I think that's as I was saying like one of the reasons I don't feel reverent about acting I feel like it's about playing and the fact that I was like I enjoyed it when I was a kid and that you can look at a five-year-old who can just be so free with playing and you pretend to be this you do that you put on that and they're just they didn't care because they it's part of what it is to be human for a five-year-old and we move further and further away from that I think the more adults become and you know we think that's not something that I can do and what's intimidating sometimes if you're on a big franchise movie set is that you think they've spent 200 million quid on this and now this huge circus is trained on me and then they go action and you think oh my god I'm intimidated this is intimidating and they have a release date set before you've even opened your mouth it's too scary and I suppose the thing that I try and hold on to is in between action and cost that I got this is this is for me and I'll have to be as playful and as courageous and as lessening as much as I can and that's that no matter how no matter if there's a smoothie bar on in this in this set and it's you know ridiculous things that they have or a messiah who cares about all that stuff that's not what the people don't know that or how much money they have what they're interested in is what what the dynamics are between the actors and whether doubt those people are alive so that's the book thing to kind of hold on to is to go I'm gonna I've got a dare to not be bland in some way maybe got time for one last question and so to get to the hand just there yeah yeah the lady that just had her on hello worth the wait so I saw a clip the other day where you were talking about James Joyce and how much you enjoyed portrait of the artist and I was just wondering what else do you like reading basically oh right yeah read portrait of the artist as a young man the other day over for the radio I read everything hello I love I love reading a lot of the time of to read scripts which actually I hate reading I hate reading scripts because I always think don't be terrible there's nothing worse there's nothing worse you kind of know I don't know what you guys think but I think you know from the first page of anything you should know if that's got some special specialness in it um but what do I like reading i I wouldn't I wouldn't say that I I like anything I love novels a lot of that a lot of the time I I have to do a lot of reading and so when I'm not reading scripts I like to read biography I love biography and but yeah it's a really interesting thing about reading and acting because your job as an actor is to try and pretend that you don't know what you're going to say next when you do know it's a really weird really weird thing so my job is to sort is to sort of I don't know with some weird way to go I don't I have to - so it's to move and a real fully realized performance sometimes you can see in performance as you can see like when you just have a long speech you don't know that you're going to we don't know how long any given person is going to speak I mean in my case today you think a lot but but it was you know you don't in a speech when you're reading a speech you don't know how long the person's gonna speak for and sometimes when people start when when actors start started with a speech you think this is gonna be long by just by the very way they start talking and you think we're gonna be settled in here for a while so um the idea of reading and performing the reading of it is very important but the the job at hand is really to try and get rid of the actually even with something like Hamlet that you kind of ripped that up in your day this is happening now this is absolutely happening now and this is this because theatre isn't a literary form that's where it starts some theater um but um so my my relationship with reading is quite weird in the sense that I don't really I don't I want that I want the reading bit to be over unless you're reading a bit of Joyce so unfortunately that's all we've got time for this afternoon but if everyone could please join me and say a huge thank you to Andrew you

Channel: OxfordUnion

Views: 196,470

Rating: 4.9645176 out of 5

Keywords: Oxford, Union, Oxford Union, Oxford Union Society, debate, debating, The Oxford Union, Oxford University

Id: wgZ71Yl1Woo

Length: 50min 35sec (3035 seconds)

Published: Sat Mar 17 2018

Reddit Comments

[u/CircleToShoot]

South Dublin, a fairly refined one at that. Wiki says he went to Gonzaga so it has that very rounded delivery, coupled with the fact that as an actor he probably neutralized his accent even more while training.

[u/BigManWithABigBeard]

South Dublin

[u/fedupofbrick]

Middle-Upper class privately educated Dublin accent.