Actors aren't stupid, mostly, and if there's a sensibility and an aesthetic that a director's going for, if you're aware of that too, you can do things to help that.
You do get really exhausted doing films. You work such long hours, and after a while, things can get out of perspective, just like if anyone's tired, things get on top of them.
For example, Americans seem reluctant to take on Shakespeare because you don't think you're very good at it - which is rubbish. You're missing out here.
It's about how you exist as a person in the world, and the idea that your work is more important than you as a person is a horrible, horrible message. I always think about a little gay boy in Wisconsin or a little lesbian in Arkansas seeing someone like me, and if I cannot be open in my life, how on earth can they?
Romeo is the most misunderstood character in literature, I think. He's hardcore to play because he's displaying the characteristics of Hamlet at the beginning, and, well, then everything else happens.
If the president of the country is not actually saying something, allowing equality to happen, how could you expect to counsel kids not to bully other kids? If they're not seeing that their society sees gay people as equals, how could you tell them what they're doing is wrong? With all this stuff going on, with the "Don't ask, don't tell" and things like that, we are second-class citizens, definitely. It just seems to me that it's hypocritical for us as a culture to say, "Bullying is a terrible thing," when really, they are just reflecting what the society is doing.
I'd been depressed before, of course. But I'm talking about really depressed. Not just feeling a bit down or sad, a depression that has something to do with biorhythms. I'm talking about the kind of depressed that floats in upon you like a fog. You can feel it coming and you can see where it is going to take you but you are powerless, utterly powerless to stop it. I know now.
I've actually found - especially doing my cabaret show - I'm connecting with people in a way I haven't connected with them. I've found that when you're open and honest, people respond to that, whatever you're being open and honest about. You could then, when you lay that as the groundwork, say, "Here I am. This is what I think. I come in peace." Then you're able to push out, to be able to talk about more things. And that's been a really heartening thing about my life, actually.
Finally, the scariest thing about abuse of any shape or form, is, in my opinion, not the abuse itself, but that if it continues it can begin to feel commonplace and eventually acceptable.