To be able to make a good living in a challenging medium like soap operas is great. The best is that I get to act and am rewarded for it. And the people I work with are great. Funny, intelligent, hard working. They're all great to be around.
'Macbeth' is one of the best operas ever, and doing it was a great experience. I added some things to the opera based from my experience on the movie - such as some of the special effects and bits of film - to make it new and interesting. It was a very good work and a very good experience.
I never learned music. I'm quite uneducated, and usually I sat in front of the TV, with soap operas on, in England. It was very inspiring for me, I'd done all this traveling around, I came back living with my parents, everyone around me was like they're living in a soap opera.
My mother took me to a lot of operas and when I was eight I got the opportunity to be in one and I realized that transformation into these make-believe situations was possible. I decided that was essentially what I wanted to do with my life.
What is the source of power of musicians who are financially browbeaten, most of whom work for minimum wage or less? Musicians who cannot even afford to buy tickets to operas or concerts in which they themselves perform?
Soap operas are like boot camps for film actors, so I really learned a lot. It was a masterclass in working for camera. I made myself watch myself every day. I would sort of try and be objective about it and critique myself a little. There's a lot more skill set than people realize in soap operas. They shoot, like, 35 scenes a day.
It's a fundamental, social attitude that the 1% supports symphonies and operas and doesn't support Johnny learning to program hip-hop beats. When I put it like that, it sounds like, 'Well, yeah,' but you start to think, 'Why not, though?' What makes one more valuable than another?
I live again the days and evenings of my long career. I dream at night of operas and concerts in which I have had my share of success. Now like the old Irish minstrel, I have hung up my harp because my songs are all sung.
Most visions of extraterrestrial life are actually steeped in human hubris. The fictional extraterrestrials of 'Star Trek' or a hundred other space operas are less alien than many of my neighbors. And funny, the ones running the place are mostly WASPish men.
I came to Berlin not to visit its museums and galleries, its operas, its theaters... but for the sake of seeing and speaking with the world's greatest living man - Alexander von Humboldt.