I had to get used to wearing a mask and wearing a prosthetic and performing with those things while singing and expressing myself through stylized movement, while keeping it as human as possible so the audience could be closer to the horror of the Phantom. |
I had to go and sing with the musical director of the film, Simon Lee, who is just incredible, and it went great. I sang with him about five things, things we'd worked on. And then I went to sing for Andrew Lloyd Weber. |
I had to prove myself to a lot of different people. |
I have a level of fear going into every project, and that's what keeps me going. |
I knew I'd just done one of the most amazing things that I will ever get a chance to do. Just to be part of a musical that's not your background and to pull it off and to think that we've done something that's really special. |
I know I have within myself... a side of solitude. I think people who know me can see, but people who just meet me can't because I'm generally very fun and gregarious. But I love to spend a lot of time on my own. I can seriously go into my own head and often love to let myself travel where I don't know where I'm going. I always felt that that was his kind of form of escape, in a way. |
I love doing the stunts. It's as simple as that. |
I love to do films of all shapes and sizes and feelings and genres. So for me to go from Tomb Raider straight into Dear Frankie, there's nothing that excites me more than to keep mixing it up. |
I mean, I made The Phantom, although The Phantom was, believe it or not, an independent film. It was just a very large, expensive independent film. |
I sang in a rock band when I was training as a lawyer. You know, not professional, we just did it for fun. We just did gigs all over Edinburgh and some in Glasgow and some at festivals. |
I spent many years not knowing where my dad was... Not knowing if my dad was alive, even. He turned up when I was 16 out of the blue. |
I started singing for The Phantom in January, and we started filming in October and I sang all the way through to the next June. In fact, I was singing for about two months before I even knew I had the role. |
I support the Celtic football team, which was in the semi-final for the European cup, and it was the first time they've been in for many years. I went to the game the night before in Glasgow with all my crazy Glaswegian friends who screamed at the top of their lungs the whole night, and I had to sit there and clap to protect my voice because I was singing for Andrew Lloyd Webber the next day in London. |
I used the physical deformity to a certain extent by conducting research into physical deformities, but I used a more internal thing. I think the physical deformity represented emotional deformities; things inside ourselves which don't allow us fully to be open to love or to be loved. It was more the effect of that deformity that I was focusing on, and it was more of an interior journey into my own dark spaces. |
I was amazed and upset by the looks I got just walking around the studio... It illuminates the ugliness and the beauty that exists within each of us, and that's what this story represents to me. |