A Quote by Michael C. Hall
Honestly, I think some of my family members of a certain generation were more skittish about me playing a gay character on Six Feet Under than watching me play a killer.
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I guess it's one thing to play a character and relate to a character, and it's a lot closer to me than people might think. They are obviously watching a person with another name. But when they are listening to my music, it's way more me and my story and my words . . . that is the main difference in that.
My family can tell you I'm not really a guy that likes roller coasters. I don't like going on Ferris wheels. I've got a six-feet rule; I like my feet no more than five, six feet from the ground at all times.
A lot of my family weren't present when I was young, so I was getting a lot of stories told to me about them. Certain members of family had reputations because they were involved in crime and stuff like that. Then, when I was out on the streets, I'd be hearing more stories about them. So I think my whole upbringing was just heavily story-oriented.
Movie stars exaggerate certain things to let the audience know they're just playing a character, as if they're saying, "Look at me, I'm not really an old man, I'm just playing one." Or "I'm not really a homosexual, I'm just playing a gay character. Or an alcoholic. Or somebody who's mentally impaired." They often do it very successfully and win awards for it.
Michael, from 'Six Dance Lessons...' He was somebody who had a lot of self-loathing; being a gay man who lost his family and felt ostracized. It was an interesting character to play. He was so bitter and jaded about life. Even though I'm not like that personally, everybody has a side of themselves that tends to look at the negative side of things. He was an interesting character to play.
I'm always happiest trying new instruments - and honestly enjoy playing, say, the glockenspiel with Radiohead as much as I do the guitar. I think regular touring has forced me to play the guitar more than anything else, which is why I'm probably most confident playing that. And whist I'd be lost if I couldn't play it too, I dislike the totemic worship of the thing... magazines, collectors, and so on. I enjoy struggling with instruments I can't really play.
I'm not playing a character. What I'm doing though is taking the worst, most shameful, peculiar, or troubling aspects of my personality. So there are elements of me that are not there. The happy version of me is not really in the show, because there's nothing funny about being happy. So it's more like I'm poaching on the funniest parts of me rather than actually creating some other character.
Heterosexual women ask questions that are a lot to do with what I did to my body and what that was like to lose all that weight and so on. To me it just reveals that that's a preoccupation of theirs. Or gay women have been really keen on knowing how I felt about playing a gay character and have often wanted to talk about their own experiences with children. Straight men have often shown some sense of relief, that they get to experience the philanderer as a woman and not have to judge her in the same way. That's fascinating to me.
I remember when I read Walter, for example, six years ago now, I said, "This is the role for me." I said that to my family. There was something there that I knew was absolutely right, and that was just based on the character. That's when gut instinct comes into play. I know there are certain things I won't do.
Playing a character that allows me to play around with some of the feelings I have inside of myself and explore them - and maybe put them to rest a little bit, or at least come to terms with them - feels successful to me. I think it's about believing in what you do.
Honestly, when I first heard that there were rumors out there about me being gay, I thought, 'Wow, someone must really hate me.' There's nothing wrong with being gay, but I just couldn't understand why someone would make up lies like that.
When I play a gay character, I want to be as believable as possible. And when I'm playing a straight character, I also want to be as believable as possible. So the less that people know about my personal life, the more believable I can be as a character.
When I'm not playing basketball I could be doing a lot of things. Honestly, I could sit on the couch, kick my feet up, play some video games - some 'Modern Warfare.'
My dad and some teachers were constantly pushing me to do better than I was doing because they all knew that I could. I was not interested in what they wanted me to do well in at the time, but still, the concept that there's a great land of opportunity out there, and all you have to do is go attack it, was not something foreign to me. It's why I'm one of the few members of my family that left home.
The function of the killer and watching him - whatever that says about the world in which we live - it was always more about that world than it was about the actual watching.
Let me explain something about guitar playing. Everyone's got their own character, and that's the thing that's amazed me about guitar playing since the day I first picked it up. Everyone's approach to what can come out of six strings is different from another person, but it's all valid.
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