The funny thing about being an actor is, at least from my point of view, you don’t spend a lot of time reflecting. You’re just on to the next thing. The work is so tricky to get sometimes. I’ve spent so much time just looking forward and trying to work on what I’m working on at the time that I don’t really think of myself as having done that much. Looking back on the resume it’s like, oh, yeah. An actor has a couple of lifetimes, I guess. I’ve been very fortunate. When you’re first starting out, for me anyway, I was a little shy telling people I was an actor. I didn’t have a lot of stuff on my resume. When you have one scene as a background guy in a television movie and call yourself an actor, that’s a little odd at first. Now I’m more comfortable with it. I’m really not aware of it until people bring it up. People that I meet in the professional world say, man you’ve been around forever. Really? I guess so. It’s great. I’ve been fortunate to work in all the venues: theater, and movies and TV and the subgenres of comedy and drama. I guess I am very, very fortunate.

You go through different arcs in your career. I think when I was younger, I was very into the performing side of the industry. I came to acting through that way, and then having gone to university and studied cinema studies and watching tons of films and understanding film theory and making a conscious choice of working with auteur director marks a new chapter in my development as an artist.

a lot of actors, we create a backstory of our own in our heads and we often relate it to our intimates in the film, say my husband. But it just depends on how actors want to work.

[About acting:] An actor brings something of themselves to a part, working with elements of his or her own life, and fashioning them into something different. I'm not Draco. Draco is not me. But the dividing line is not black and white. It's painted in shades of grey.

I think the purpose of the actor is to illuminate the human condition. When you go to a film and you see a good actor, it's because you identify with them—you know what they're feeling—and a good actor draws, I believe, from their own experience. And when it's true for him, it's true for you. If a director imposes a performance or you try to mimic somebody, it can be funny or brilliant, but it isn't moving.

People often say that an actor 'plays' a character well, but that's an amateurish notion. Developing a characterization is not merely a matter of putting on makeup and a costume and stuffing Kleenex in your mouth. That's what actors used to do, and then called it a characterization. In acting everything comes out of what you are, or some aspect of who you are.

I approach all my films as my first. If you carry that innocence, it reflects in the camera. I know I have become a star but I don't want to believe it. I want to be that simple, no fuss guy who approaches a film as if it is my first movie.

The full package of being a good actor is that one can embrace any character. There could be challenges sometimes, but one cannot be considered a good actor without being bold enough to explore one’s skills at length.

Of course, people are more affected by actors or acting. But as a filmmaker, I need some logic. And this was my logic in making these two films, and how I connected these stories and these films together. People say my films don’t have any plot or storyline, but in my logic there is a storyline.

The main thing is to remain yourself, and this is impossible for a professional actor. Although it is difficult to think ahead. It seems to me that cinema and music, complementing each other, can coexist in my life.

One of the most difficult aspects of being an actor is trying to find the right work. Work that speaks to an audience, that you enjoy doing and that is reflective of your artistic sensibility. To be a contemporary movie actor, you have to kill people - that's basically it. If you don't cock'n'load'n'fire a Smith&Wesson at some point in your film career, you're not going to have a film career. There just aren't enough movies that I like to keep me working in movies all the time. Well, let me rephrase that: there aren't enough available parts.

I think it’s been a very slow progression for me in terms of shifting the perspective. I did a lot of really, really small films that, at least for me, shifted my trajectory in terms of the way that I saw myself as an actor and the projects that I wanted to pursue. I think it helped me bring a deeper level of understanding to the characters that I play, whether they’re in small films or big films. So I think taking some time out to focus on really small, character-driven roles helped lead me to those bigger projects that were also really character-driven and demanded a certain level of depth that I might not have had without those smaller, more character-focused independent films.

All my movies are my favourites. I am not sentimental so I appreciate everything I have done, whether good, bad or ugly. My roles are challenging and I am always looking for different ways to interpret a role even if it is familiar territory for me. It doesn’t matter if it’s something I am accustomed to doing every day. This is how I see it: Now, it’s not me, it’s me in someone else’s character and I want it to be believable.

I feel like you kind of have to live life to its fullest in order to be a good actor. Draw on experiences. The more experiences the better, and I really have had a lot of experiences in life, even at my young age.