What has been the biggest challenge in your career so far? How did you overcome it?

One of my biggest challenges was being in a cast group for six months, where everyone hated each other. We had to travel to different locations and live and work together. The environment became unbearably toxic and aggressive and was taking its toll on the whole cast, including me. I initially struggled as I have always been a people person. When I identified that relationships were beyond repair, I used the opportunity to learn from the experience and spend time during the production alone and focusing on myself and truly getting to understand what makes me tick. Looking back, I am pleased to have experienced such an environment as it helped me to understand myself better as a person.

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What are your ‘‘5 things I do to prepare for the role” and are you able to share a story or example for each?

When preparing for a role, I will always do the following:

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1) Identify my character’s backstory to give me a scope and mindset of the character. If there is no additional information available apart from the screenplay, I will make up a loose backstory that has continuity with the film.

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2) I always look for personality similarities between me and my character. I feel this is crucial to giving a compelling performance. As an actor, I don’t believe in desperately trying to squeeze myself into the character. I believe in finding similarities between me and my character e.g. attitude/motives will give the foundation for the character to fit into me, which will subsequently result in more organic performance. I am in the process of doing this in the film ‘Loving Emily’ (Moda-image Film Productions, dir. Yan Frame). There are close similarities between me and my character Nicholas.

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3) I always explore posturing, voice tone, pace and mannerisms weeks ahead of filming or rehearsals. This method is vital to me as the physical attributes make me feel like the character. I used this method to its highest level in a film that is due for release, ‘Baby Killer’. It is a story about a cop that accidentally kills a 12-year-old girl in a car accident and dealing with the abuse and repercussions.

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4) I respectfully debate my co-stars regarding characters during production. It’s naughty, but I don’t tell them what I am doing because I want their genuine opinions to relationships and motives. With this information, I shape my character more effectively when we shoot scenes.

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5) Regardless of the type of character I am playing, I always try and empathise with them. This method helps me to act the scenes more passionately, and most importantly — believably. I can do this with even the most warped characters. For instance, I play an evil murderer with perverse tastes in the short film ‘Sequence’ (in post-production). I don’t approve that kind of behaviour in real life however there is a scene that shows how he became the way he is, and this is the element I connect with to play the character to the best of my ability.

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What methods or techniques do you use to find truth in your character’s behaviour?

As a method actor, this is one of my favourite pre-production activities. During the development of my character, I will always attempt to be around the kind of people I will be playing leading up to shoot. I believe that irrespective to how well you perform there will be someone in the audience that will challenge your performance because they know someone that has experienced what you are portraying. It is easy for actors and production companies to stereotype characters, e.g. drug addict, schizophrenia, etc.. I also watch videos and documentaries of people who have the traits of the character I will be playing, observing speech patterns, body language and any habits.