I play a lot of characters where I don't even speak in my own voice. I learned about focus and I learned to trust that things can work when they're not heightened and that it's interesting when things are pared down.
I relate to those characters - and any character I play - in as much as I put myself in their positions and feel how I would personally deal with their experiences.
The only two characters I can play convincingly are myself and a dumber and sweeter version of myself.
I want to be an Actress that is forced to change in order to play certain characters or tell stories. I don't want to just play a version of myself.
My idea of making time for myself is writing songs. I never stop beating myself up about trying to be productive, so I don't really like to do a lot of things other than write in my journal and write songs.
We don't think about how the songs are going to translate so much during the writing process. Once the song is recorded, and once we're mixing, that's when it occurs to me. Then you start rehearsing to play shows. I never concern myself about how we're going to pull it off live, because I know we'll figure out a way to do it.
So what I do, more than play any instrument - I mean, I love to play - but more than that, I write songs. Songs that are about living, about what it's like to be going through all the things that people go through in life.
I've never been that uncomfortable talking about it. Things come out [in the media] about me. When it's out, it's someone else's version of what's the matter with me. I want it to be my version of what it is. My recourse is to do my version.
One of the great things about The Umbrella Academy' and its TV version is that there are 10 hours of footage, so characters are a lot more fleshed out and further developed.
A lot of my songs are about death and the fleetingness of life. It just feels good to remind myself about that a lot. For whatever reason. And it's a beautiful thing, actually. It seems to me like it's a beautiful way to live in the world and to relate to things, with an awareness of temporality.
There's a version of Tony [from "I Don't Feel at Home in This World Anymore"] that I think could be heightened. Trying to find the balance. A lot of that comes from "Who is he?" I think we've all kind of met that dude. The comic book enthusiast, or someone who gets too excited about things, but his own enthusiasm tends to alienate him. I relate to it because I've seen that guy.
Left to myself, I would only play an Indian. But the reality was that there were hardly any Indian characters I could play in the films made in England and Hollywood. So I had to learn how to disappear into a variety of characters.
The character I play is a wonderful compilation of things I hate about myself and things I love about myself and things that I've invented to make her even more interesting than me.
When I'm on stage, the songs that we've chosen to play from the back catalog are things that still resonate with me, and matter to me. And the songs that I couldn't be a part of, we don't play anymore.
I've written a lot about southern California, but I don't use the same characters. Leave the people in the songs in the songs, is my philosophy.
If I completely understood what was going on and I understood these songs, they wouldn't make sense to play live anymore. They're still enigmatic for me. I'm still searching in the songs as they are. That's what's actually been the most fun about playing and touring for me is that there's still a lot of caverns in the songs where you can go and hide out different nights.