When my films didn't work, I wondered what was wrong in my acting graph, and then I realised the dedication I had for music, I didn't have the same for acting.
When I started doing advertisements, I really enjoyed the whole process of shooting, and I realised that I could do the little bit of acting required quite easily. My directors also told me that I have a flair for acting and that I should polish it and try for films. Then I thought I probably had it in me - why not give it a shot?
I was 19 or 20 when I was confused whether to take up films as a career. At that juncture, I enrolled in an acting workshop and then eventually realised I was destined to be in films.
My father was a classical singer of baroque music, and my older sister was in musical theatre, and I thought about doing the same thing but then realised straight acting was for me.
I was studying to be an architect, I wasn't plotting to join the movies. Films were just another career option. I took acting up with the same schoolgirl enthusiasm I had for examinations. Acting is a job and I take it very seriously.
For newcomers, modelling is like a stepping stone to acting. The exposure and experience in modelling helps... But for acting, we have to show a lot of hard work and dedication towards it.
When I first started out in music, I was so negative. I was knee-deep in the streets. Then my friends started going to jail. They said, 'Boy, you better start taking this seriously; you got a chance to do something with your life.' That's when I realised I had to focus. The music led to the acting.
Your acting will not be good until it is only yours. That's true of music, acting, anything creative. You work until finally nobody is acting like you.
My dad is a singer, so it was always either music or acting with me. All the way up through college I was doing both, and even after college I was in a reggae band. Then the acting really started taking off, so the music had to become a hobby.
I've always played music and I've always been in bands and there have been periods in my life where the music has taken a much more front row seat than any acting. For a big period of time the acting work was really a way of raising money to fund my music. And then that all sort of changed around and that's fine.
What I've discovered is, really, acting is acting is acting. It's all the same. Seventy-five percent of the skills are the same in both media.
I always have a rule that acting is acting and truth is truth and you just go out there and you do it. But what happens in each medium is that you have other responsibilities. The acting remains the same, but each medium dictates assuming other halves to make the acting work.
I wouldn't do anything else [besides acting], for sure. If I did, it would be music or some other pursuit in this same area. I have been acting and playing music since childhood. It's what I enjoyed most.
I always had acting work when I needed it. I think that is why, when I watch films or TV series in America, I find in small roles or in supporting roles really amazing faces, where I have the feeling these people have actually had a life outside of acting. I find it almost a pity that I've never done anything else.
I stay subjective because that's what I do. That's one of my abilities. I don't need to watch it because I've had the adventure. I don't do low-budget acting. I do the same acting, whether I'm in a Jim Cameron or not. I always try to do good work. There's no snobbery in there
People talk about the difference between radio acting, TV acting and stage acting, but I think it's all the same. For instance, when I played Vultan in 'Flash Gordon,' I put as much energy into it as I would with 'King Lear' - it's all part of the same thing.
I'd always thought that acting was, like, you had to work really hard, you had to change the way you walked, you talked, and all of that. But that's not acting. That's shmacting.