London is a great city and a great theatre-going city, so if you do a play, especially if it's a good one, people will come and see it. Of course, it's nice to do a great play and/or a great part in New York, Chicago or Seattle, but it's doubly special to spend time in London with a play that's enticing.
When I was at acting school, the idea of doing a play in London was just a dream. I spent one summer at Oxford working on classical material with people such as Fiona Shaw, Juliet Stevenson, Ben Kingsley and Simon McBurney. Who knew that I'd ever come back to London in a Eugene O'Neill play with Jessica Lange?
I've never seen Long Day's Journey Into Night. I read the play and knew about it when I was in school, and always figured that the role of the tubercular son Edmund, which Paul Nicholls is now playing, would be the way to go. But school was ten years ago and now I'm older, and so I'm playing Jamie Jr, the eldest Tyrone boy, which is a challenge.
I was thrilled when it came around. As an actor, you can't think of anything you're working on as a classic: you try to separate that out just like, when you're doing a Shakespeare play, you still have to come up with the character and memorise your lines.
Everyone is talking about Hollywood stars in the West End, but I don't think people see me as that and I don't either: I don't live there. I'm a New Yorker who has managed to find work in a few films (among them, Clueless, The Object Of My Affection, The Cider House Rules). Being able to finance a movie isn't my goal; what I like about acting has nothing to do with celebrity.
