I'm very aware that when one is acting in the theater, you do become kind of animal about it. And you're reliant on instincts rather than tact a lot of the time.
One thing I will say - my job gets harder and harder. The more you understand about what you are capable of, the less the instrument can do it physically. It's an inverse equation, if that's the right phrase. I just slammed those two words together. It sounded right.
Older people say, 'Oh I loved you in 'Sense and Sensibility,'' and that's the only film they want to talk about. Equally, there are people who only want to talk about 'Galaxy Quest.' And there's a whole bunch of teenagers who only want to talk about 'Dogma.'
With the best intentions, the job of acting can become a display of accumulated bad habits, trapped instincts and blocked energies. Working with the Alexander Technique has given me sightings of another way... Mind and body, work and life together. Real imaginative freedom.
Certainly as actors, and maybe as directors, you've got to hang on to something childlike. You've got to know what play is. I haven't worked with Mike Leigh, but I know him very well and there's something open in his eyes about what's in front of him. And the same is true of Alfonso in a Mexican, mad way. There's an enthusiastic response to something. Neil Jordan, the same, when he gets excited . You just want to know there's a human being in there.
I never expected to have any kind of film career, to be honest. It was all a bit of a surprise. But I was in a big hit play on Broadway. America, as many people will say, says yes more often than we do. And so I was suddenly surrounded by people saying yes. But I was aware that was 'cause of what I was in. It had a big impact.