i moved to los angeles in 1983 and uh wasn't basically an unemployed musician
and uh a buddy of mine nicholas cage i was filling out job applications and uh nick suggested that
i meet his agent because he felt i should be an actor why i don't know i don't know still
don't know yeah i mean for me it was really just i just thought well you know at this point i'll do
anything i just got to pay the rent i was on the verge of being evicted somebody hands you the ball
and you run you know i mean and if you get hit you get hit maybe you make it through you never
know but i mean i i just know that somebody handed me the ball at a certain point and i
was hungry enough to keep running and i'm still running i maintain a hunger but not an ambition
i started playing the guitar at the age of 12. it was the first real passion that i had so
i literally don't remember going through puberty because i locked myself in a room at the age of 12
12 13 and i just played the guitar learned things off records and taught myself how to play
it was my life and it was the only solace it was the only sanctuary it was the only security it's
my first love you have to realize that whatever your day is whatever you're doing whatever your
job is whatever people think of you or project you to be none of it matters uh really until you
look around and see people who who are in need and um i think that probably the best benefit of my
job is to help to make people smile who otherwise wouldn't or couldn't have a smile on their face
so yeah that's my idea i began to study at various places in the loft studio studied with some other
teachers i read all the books that you could read and all that was great but you realize that
the only way to learn how to is not act necessarily the only way to learn how to
react and behave because it's just behavior and its reaction was to do it it's on the job training
it's trial by fire so i did my best to work up my own approach towards the character and such
to go into a place where you know i mean i've spent time in great ormond street where it was
i was the parent when my daughter was ill and it was uh i mean it was
i've known darkness in my life but that was the darkest period ever
i'd always kind of done these visits but after that the visits became more and more important
because the kids bless them you know they're so strong they're so courageous parents are the ones
who are slowly dying and to be able to bring a smile or a giggle to these people is it means
everything in the world even you know when i was a kid back then i didn't want to do the formulae
pitter-patter stuff you know i i thought well if i'm if i'm going to go from being a musician
you know guitarist to an actor there's only one way to approach it really which is
kind of the same way that you approach music and so at the time i remember thinking i think
there's a general lack of punk rock actors in the in the neighborhood of hollywood so i made this
vow to myself that i would only do the things that i wanted to do to take the road that i i
thought was really the only right road for me i was pumping gas most definitely printing t-shirts
and selling ink pens and you know i mean every any anything and everything there was a guy who
i worked with many years ago and we were talking about success and money and all that stuff
and he told me this one thing he said you know money doesn't change anybody money reveals them
you know same thing with success and uh i i i i believe that you know
wholeheartedly i'm still exactly the guy that used to pump gas you know i'm still the guy
that was a mechanic for a minute you know i'm still exactly i just happen to have a
weird weirder job at the moment the things that i probably should have done not from my perspective
from my point of view i did the right things every every film that i've done i've made that choice
i don't have any regrets whatsoever i think any actor given a certain amount of success
or given a certain amount somebody hands you the ball you run with it any actor can do that
but i it's not me it wasn't me i was on a television series for three or four years about
four seasons and i was without question a product not my own problem of somebody else's product
and they shoved me down the throats of america and it was a very uncomfortable situation and i
swore to myself that when i got off that show i would do what i wanted the way i wanted to do it
and i stick to that i mean i if i had to do leading man things just to just to continue to
work i'd rather go back to pumpkin gas if we could celebrate every breath that we take because
nothing's a guarantee if we could celebrate the breath and the exhale which is being alive
without you know how my car won't start there are things that are very very important in life that
we we just we don't think about you know and one of the most worrisome things that i went through
for years is you freaked him freaked out about your past you're worried you're scared to death
of the future but the now doesn't exist and i think that's a grave mistake that we might
by the time you were 15 that you were already had lived in 20 different homes is that true
uh my mom liked to move a lot a lot a lot yeah one time we moved from one house to the
house next door so how do you adjust how do you get to be you know every if you're going
in a different school all the time it was kind of normal for we didn't know anything else you know
so for us it was kind of normal what really helps you find
that character is when you get into the ring with other actors which pushed me well the
last thing i want to look like is myself you know i've always felt that it was important to
escape i always figured if i just did the same thing over and over i'd normally bore myself but
i'd bore the audience you know i somehow in my mind i saw this opportunity like a way to mesh
characters like cartoon characters so i started thinking about the parameters that were available
to cartoon characters so i tried to incorporate these kind of ideas into the character of captain
jack sparrow so that i could try to push those parameters and control the sort of suspension of
disbelief to be able to control the characters actions words movements cartoon characters can
get away with things we can captain jack sparrow can do things that i could never do he could say
things that i could never say so it was for me a way to stretch the parameters of of a character
captain jack sparrow was a character that i had built from the ground up um and with something
that i i of course put a lot of mice as you do with all characters but you put a lot of yourself
no one should accept anything but the truth to have to suffer the ignorance of someone lying to
you for some type of gain i think that the people who understand or know or get or or are touched or
you know he's so ignorant that he makes you laugh if they're moved by captain jack sparrow
in any way i i am i don't need a company to do that um
i can just do that myself and nobody can take that away
you