A Quote by Xavier Samuel
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.
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I'm so used to taping myself and sending it off and never hearing back. I started to believe that nobody actually ever sees my tapes, apart from my agent.
It's a weird profession, as I don't really consider myself an actor. I did at one point, and I went and started doing auditions, and I was so useless at them and so demoralised by doing audition after audition and not getting them and also not being able to take it in my stride at all. I just felt crushed and worthless.
At about 17, I decided I wanted to take kiteboarding seriously and compete, so my agents were like, 'Just keep sending in a few audition tapes anyway, just for good stuff.'
I didn't grow up as a religious person under any sort of system or anything like that, I just felt like I've always been sort of intrigued by that - how it can make people's lives better - I mean, it's a powerful thing. So I was interested in thinking about that kind of stuff.
I'd been trying to do this since I was 15, sending out the demo tapes and doing all the things that everyone told me that I should be doing. But no deal - like, never.
My one piece of advice to anyone trying to do acting - this would just be to keep going. It sounds really basic, but I went to 121 auditions my first year in L.A. That is no exaggeration, because I keep lists - I know it's a little psychotic - of every audition that I have ever been to. I went to 121 auditions and I got none. But who cares?
I put out tapes, but I always kept saying, 'Why am I putting all this energy into these tapes?' I was like, 'I'd rather make just an album because I have a vision; I know how I want to do my records.' I always felt like an artist as well.
With any kind of physical test, I don't know what it is, I always seem to get competitive. Remember when you were in school and they'd do those hearing tests? And you'd really be listening hard, you know? I wanted to do unbelievable on the hearing test. I wanted them to come over to me after and go, 'We think you may have something close to super-hearing. What you heard was a cotton ball touching a piece of felt. We're sending the results to Washington, we'd like you to meet the President.'
I always just like to improvise, and that goes for my audition tapes as well.
Sometimes I get kind of bored if I go like a month or so and I'm not doing anything. At first I'm like, 'Cool, I'll have a little time off and I'll get to hang out with friends,' but then after a little while goes by I'm like, 'Oh,' and I really wish that I could go back and start doing work again.
I always say to my wife, don't tell anyone I watch this [shows like The X Factor and Pop Idol], but it fascinates me because I've done so many auditions and been knocked back.
In Morocco, a Muslim country, I got to hear the call to prayer five times a day. At first it felt kind of scary, kind of dangerous, because of the propaganda towards anything Muslim in the U.S. subconsciously coming out in me. By the end of the trip, it was so beautiful, and then not hearing it when I got back to L.A. really threw me off.
I've always been surprised when a straight guy likes me. It's just been like my whole life has been kinda like that. I definitely felt like when I started writing music, it wasn't writing for a gay audience at all. I was just writing for me. But what I say whenever I get this question is my best friends have always been gay, I've always been, as a person, just accepted by the gay community, and celebrated and had the best nights of my life at gay clubs. Always had a fashion sense usually with drag and I don't know. That's just kind of my people. That's just kind of where I fit in.
I'm always polite in auditions, but I wasn't like, 'Oh, please give me the job,' for 'Robin Hood' because I didn't think I'd get it. I got told about the audition just a few days before I went to India to film something else. I must have been a bit cocky with it.
I'm always nervous doing auditions - to be honest, I hate it. I always envy the actors who are so cool and cold-blooded when they go in for an audition, especially if it's for a part that you would really love to play.
Personal identity seems like it's just such an American archetype, from Holly Golightly re-inventing herself in 'Breakfast At Tiffany's' to Jay Gatsby in 'The Great Gatsby.' It seems like the sort of archetypal American issue. If you're given the freedom to be anything, or be anyone, what do you do with it?
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