I went to junior seminary when I was 12 training to be a missionary priest. That was a kind of boarding school in Coatbridge, not far from Wishaw where I grew up. But we lived there almost all the time.
I joined the drama group and we got invited just to sing because I was a singer and the drama group did musicals. We went to a drama camp in Cumbernauld shortly before I was meant to go to university but the theatre director gave me the lead part in this thing we were devising. One of them had a massive, long cane. His job was to just batter, very casually and without animosity, the cows until they got up.I went back to my digs and the only thing for dinner was beef stew. I couldn’t stomach it and I haven’t eaten meat since that night and that was 35 years ago or something like that. I thought it was for one night only but I’ve never touched it since.I was a chain-smoker and a heavy drinker. But when I met my wife I decided to stop, I used to smoke about 50 a day.
He was a hard taskmaster, he annoyed people. He wouldn’t be upset by that, he knows he upsets people. But he taught me that it’s not about what your character is feeling, which you get obsessed with as an actor. They’re internal, they don’t communicate to an audience.If you think of what your character’s feelings make your character do, so still thinking about them, but taking it to the next level and asking what they make you do or try to do.