This sounds geeky, but when I run, I like to listen to musicals like 'Les Miserables.' The soundtracks are 75 minutes or longer, and I keep going until the story ends, so it feels like a good workout.
This sounds geeky, but when I run, I like to listen to musicals like Les Miserables. The soundtracks are 75 minutes or longer, and I keep going until the story ends, so it feels like a good workout.
I go the gym and I try to run on the treadmill and I listen to music but it doesn't motivate me enough. So I'm going to get a recording of a pack of wolves gaining on me. People would be like, 'Why is that guy crying on that treadmill over there?' 'I don't know, but he's been yelling, 'help' for like 20 minutes. He's getting a good workout.
My view is that musicals are love stories with great final scenes. It's just that simple. Musicals are also conflicts between two worlds. And by those criteria, 'The Color Purple' is actually exactly the kind of story that makes for a great musical. Yes, it's got hard stuff in it, but so does 'Les Miserables' and 'Phantom of the Opera.'
But I like to listen to demos. I like to hear the finished product. It's like listening to a song - I mean, a story. If you're going to sit here and tell me a story, I just like to listen. I don't want to make them up.
I'm doing 'Les Miserables,' the movie. I've done a lot of musicals and a lot of movies, and I know there are not a lot of people in Hollywood who have been down those two paths so I've been like, 'Come on, let's do a movie/musical.'
It's like the piano and the cello are being poured into my body, the same way the IV and blood transfusions are. And the memories of my life as it was, and the flashes of it as it might be, are coming so fast and furious. I feel like I can no longer keep up with them but they keep coming and everything is colliding, until I cannot take anymore. Until I cannot be like this a second longer.
I went to a performing arts school. I went to an audition for a musical, 'Les Miserables,' in the West End, and I got in, and my parents were like, 'Oh, you can sing?' So I kind of started singing properly when I was, like, seven.
When I listen to something, I like to be taken out of my seat and thrown across the room. If it sounds good and feels good, that's it.
I'm a geeky actor, in the way that I like the craft of acting. I trained as a stage actor and was given a lot of technical tools to play with. I like the craft of acting. It sounds geeky when I say it, but it's true.
'Les Miserables', the book, 'Les Miserables', the musical - it's about giving; it's about goodness. It's about compassion and love.
Most bands play one style of song. If you listen to Metallica it all sounds exactly like Metallica, and if you listen to Black Sabbath it all sounds like Black Sabbath. I like AC/DC a lot but you can pick those sounds out on the radio in a heartbeat because they all have certain things in common.
Every year I go to Broadway to see a musical - I like the music. I saw 'Mamma Mia;' I saw 'Les Miserables;' I saw 'Phantom of the Opera' like six, seven times.
My mum bought discounted tickets for shows like 'Cats' and 'Les Miserables'; I became completely enamoured.
I can't comprehend that I'm in the film of 'Les Miserables.' It's one of those dreams I thought would be unattainable for someone like me, who came from nowhere.
I started off when I was seven years old doing musicals. I was in ‘Les Miserables’ and ‘The Sound of Music,’ and my mum’s an actress. My parents divorced when I was young, and when she couldn’t find a babysitter, I was in the wings, sleeping.
I listened to John Denver and Simon & Garfunkel. Edith Piaf was a huge favourite. Then I discovered musicals - I loved 'Les Miserables' - and, at about 14, I started listening to David Gray.