A Quote by Ben Miller
You can reveal yourself on stage in a way that you can't on TV. If you drop a character on TV, it's death. Each character has to be ruthlessly, faultlessly played. But live, you can hint at what's going on behind. You can let the audience in a bit and go off the script.
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I started off doing theater as a kid, and I always played a character. I hid behind the script and was told where to go. But to actually perform as yourself is very difficult. I didn't used to enjoy it, but now I do.
Filming a movie is different from a TV show because film is a lot quicker, you get to see the character progress and grow all in one script, and in television, you wait for a weekly update on each character.
In film, the camera can get an array of shots so the audience can see the emotion the character is giving off. Using close-ups on the character's face really helps get the message across. On stage, you can't do that. But the stage has that live feeling that you can't get anywhere else because the audience is right there.
Stage is so important because it teaches me how to convey character with words - how to convey how a character reacts by the way they appear on stage. I can usually tell a playwright from someone who has never written for the stage. Did the character work? Did the dialogue reveal who the character is?
I don't really think it matters if you go into stage or TV as long as you do a bit of character work, really.
Playing a TV character for seven years is almost like when you do a play. You live, breathe, and everything else with that character 24-7 for six months or four months or whatever, and that gets very deep in your blood. When you do a TV character for seven years, that's a long time. It becomes a seminal era in your life.
Be it TV, films, or stage, I love substantial roles. The length of the character doesn't matter, but if the character is well thought, then I have to grab it.
It makes it easier, if you can't do an American accent. I don't know. It's different. I played a character in Never Let Me Go where the script for my character was very sparse, and I enjoyed it. With Never Let Me Go, I had a whole book written from my character's point of view, so I always knew where I was. But, with Ryan [Gosling], it was just easy. He's such a brilliant actor and he is so prepared. He doesn't have to warm himself up to be in a scene. He's just in it. It draws you in, in a way.
Whether it's a lower or higher budget project, a TV show or a film, the words on the page are the same to me and I approach the work in the same way. My job is to lift the character from the page, whether it's a TV or film script.
Episodic TV is notoriously brutal because just when you think 'I've got this, I know this character' you can pick up the script for series four and you die in the first episode - or your character suddenly transitions from a woman to a man.
Some things can be hidden on TV with the help of cameras but in theatre, you are seen live by the audience, so you can't get out of your character.
The big difference I think between tv and stage is definitely the immediate buzz that you get. And that's not just as an actor, as an audience member you're getting the chance to have this kind of two-way process where the actors and the audience are experiencing the same thing. With tv you often have to wait months and months down the line to actually get the pay-off. Whereas with theatre it's a very immediate thing.
I came from stage in high school, and on stage you kind of overdo with putting on a character a little bit. Sometimes you become a character and sometimes the character becomes you.
The behind-the-scenes kind of process at TV, especially live television - that was super scary, but I think it's made me more comfortable now. If I ever have to go on live TV, I at least remember what it was like when I was 16.
I was 19 years when I got into acting training classes at a TV station and then I found a way to express my feelings. My father left us when I was a kid and I just shut down all of my emotions. I wasn't talkative; I didn't know how to communicate with people. I tried to separate from people. After I got into the classes I found a way of expressing myself through characters. I can cry behind a character, I can shout behind a character and it became a relief. And it's fun.
I think there's something really positive about getting to explore a character for a long time on a TV show and live with that character and live with the choices they make, but it's also really great to step in.
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