I used to trade stocks online, and I kind of felt gross, like, all I'm doing is making money off other people's creativity, and I'm not creating anything myself.
People have been like 'well you need millions of dollars to buy and sell stocks.' That sort of idea was thrown out of the window with online brokerages like E-trade and Fidelity, and today, we think that you don't even need thousands of dollars to trade stocks.
Anything commodity-like will be sold online. The world is going to trade commodities like it trades stocks.
I felt that as an actor I continued to excel and felt really comfortable and confident in myself that I wanted to at least give it a go and picture myself doing other things. It was testament to 'Emmerdale' that they gave me the confidence and creativity to pursue other challenges.
I come from a family of craftsmen. We like to make things with our hands. Better than the pleasure of making money is the pleasure of making the product and saying, 'Wow. I did that.' I couldn't see myself doing anything other than making good things to eat.
It seems to me that whether it is recognized or not, there is a terrific frustration which increases in intensity and harmfulness as time goes on, when people are always daydreaming of the kind of place in which they would like to live, yet never making the place where they do live into anything artistically satisfying to them. Always to dream of a cottage by a brook while never doing anything to the stuffy house in the city is to waste creativity in this very basic area, and to hinder future creativity by not allowing it to grow and develop through use.
There is a huge stigma around people who are online making money online.
I used to do a lot of the day trading and the stocks. I used to have the Ameritrade and trade options.
It isn't called TV money for nothing. There was a time where I paid my rent by doing theater for years, and I was able to buy groceries and pay my electric bill. I considered myself to be making a living as an actor. This kind of money that we make is a whole other level, of course. But it really is simply the cherry on top of a job and a role that I adore.
My parents have worked their asses off their whole entire lives, they still do, and I never felt like anything would be handed to me. I never felt sorry for myself. I felt like, "Wow, this is incredible. I'm able to do this for myself." I think once you have that sense of empowerment at a young age and you allow your children to have that empowerment, it will fuel them for a lifetime.
It never felt like we were making a 'Star Wars' movie. It didn't feel like it was serious. It just felt like we were allowed to be creative and kind of goof off.
One of the reasons 'Boogie Nights' is one of my favorite movies is because it's about people in this gross industry, but they actually treat each other kind of like family. And at the end of the day, they're really kind to each other, and I feel like that is what we have.
I've been doing American auditions for a while, and it always felt sort of like sending these audition tapes off into the ether. So just hearing anything back from anyone was kind of startling.
As a teenager, in my songbook, I used to script what my lighting would be like. I used to dance in my roo;, it was like putting myself in a trance, and making myself feel good about things, almost like a private ceremony of begging people to like you.
I've always felt like there's a certain amount of doing what I do, and performing and making records and doing interviews and photo shoots and that, that are kind of a necessary evil of getting my music to people's ears to hear. Over the years, I've just become more tolerant of that.
I wrote them kind of consecutively, starting with 'Holy,' and then '1950,' 'Talia,' 'Upper West Side,' 'Make My Bed,' and I was kind of like, 'This is it.' It felt right. It felt complete. It felt like a sentence. I really enjoyed making it.
I started out doing multiple characters from day one, when I got my fist job in 'Dumbo's Circus.' I'm used to getting in an argument with myself, throwing myself off a cliff, patching myself up and brushing myself off with an arm around my shoulder.