The new idea for me now is creativity. I like to express myself.
Whatever I have not yet learned to tolerate in myself inevitably will appear in my children. In this way, they, like Julia, guide me to a new level of self-awareness and everyone benefits.
That's why I'm really trying to produce my own stuff. This film was so good, because I produced it myself, and developed it, and made it with New Line, which is a smaller studio, so I was in control of a lot of stuff that I wasn't in control of for my other films.
I'm not trying to keep up or adapt. I'm allowing myself to grow, evolve and create new music.
My first agent dissuaded me from calling myself 'Cumberbatch.' I had six months of not very productive time with her, so I changed agents. The new one said, 'Why aren't you using your family name? It's a real attention-grabber.' I worried, 'How much is it going to cost to put my name in lights?' But then I decided that's not my problem.
I just wanted to express myself and put out music of how I'm feeling - give back to my fans and gain new ones in the process.
I always wanted to be that guy who pushed the envelope in all kind of ways and tried something new. When I keep that rule going, it always takes me to a new place. There are times when I fail miserably, but I always find myself knowing one more thing better, doing one more thing that I never did before.
Truth be told, of course, what I enjoy most is reinventing myself and doing new projects where I work in new genres, or I get to find what the voice of a particular musical is.
I love getting to be someone else, to explore the parts of myself and other people that we may keep locked away or have no idea exist within us. I also love starting new projects because I always walk away with such a wonderful new group of friends.
I've got my foot in 'Saturday Night Live,' and my heart is there in a lot of ways, but I'm really pushing myself to do these new projects. It's scary as hell, but it's fun to have other things to keep my creative brain cooking.
Skillshare is a terrific online learning community for creative people. It teaches you new skills through well-made videos with great production values. I've been using Skillshare to teach myself Adobe After Effects. All the videos feature people who are professionals in their field. I love this site.
I like to keep my budgets at a certain price when I work for someone else, and even more so now that I'm working for myself, and use new technologies to deliver films that look like they have high production levels.
I'm trying my best to keep up with all this new technology, and I surround myself with all these wonderful people that are in the know and kind of help me out with all that.
Hopefully I inspire people just to lose themselves a little bit. That's what I enjoy doing on stage: challenging myself with a new territory, like performing differently, moving differently, singing differently, just let people know that it's okay just to do something that they've never done before.
I want to always find new ways of reinventing myself.
I get myself a gig somewhere, whether it's in a club, whether it's in a bar, it doesn't matter, and I just work on New Year's Eve because I always feel it's very symbolic for me for the next year, for the new year.
I don't see myself as either Irish or American, I'm a New Yorker.
We've had a debate about immigration in New Zealand for some time. Now what we're trying to champion in that conversation is a recognition that New Zealand has been built off immigration. I myself am a third-generation New Zealander.
I grew up in the suburbs outside of Newcastle, and there were blank walls, and there was a lot of space to imagine - the fields and the motorways - so I used to sit and talk to myself as different people.
We're basically this very young species, only 200,000 years old. We're one of the newcomers, and we're going through the same process that other species go through, which is, how do I keep myself alive while taking care of the place that's going to keep my offspring alive?
