Hugo Weaving
We're all outsiders in a way. We're all alone and can become very lonely.
To me acting originally became an extension of game playing. Childhood games, and that kinda grew into something else. As I've got older it's changed and it's moved more towards self-understanding about how other people escape into other worlds. It's become me trying to open doors into other people.
Sometimes people that you try and understand are bottomless wells and you can't get there, and in a way those kinds of characters are fascinating to play and often in a very painful space, a very screwed up world and you naturally do find that place. But I do agree that you sometimes by necessity suffer.
It's kind of chased away a few demons for me and, um, it's educated me a little bit more.
Initially I probably didn't even call it acting, but dressing up or something. As a kid I think you fully imagine the world in which you want to inhabit, so you put some clothes on and just kind of freely imagine this world, and it's a total imaginary world.
I think I'm much less self confident today. I actually went through a quite painful period because of that thinking that I was completely hopeless. But I think that's something that we all go through at various times of our lives and it was quite a sustained thing with me.
I think I'm a bit of a dreamer. I don't like the reality of life to impinge much on my life. I think what's happened to me over the years is that it has impinged and made my world change for the better because I'm being forced to kind of enter the same world that other people inhabit.
I guess I judge my films by how pleased I am with the work I do, so it's kind of on another level. If they do well at the box office, then that's great. Then I'm really pleased about that too.
I generally find an affinity with a lot of the people I play and I suppose if I didn't feel an affinity for them then they wouldn't be particularly good performances.
I found taking the hits more difficult than giving them... between that hit and that hit I want to get another one in.
I don't think I'll ever escape the fact that I don't belong anywhere in particular. I've often dreamed about going back to Nigeria, but that's a very romantic notion. It's a hideous country to go to in reality.
Film sets are constantly amusing because you really are creating something that is so very surreal and I kind of like that.
As long as the role is somehow feeding you you're likely to enjoy it and keep hold of it. And sometimes I work on individuals in such a way that it hasn't been feeding my own life. I think if you're not feeding yourself while trying to get inside someone else then what your actually doing is closing the doors on your own imagination.