Aneurin Barnard: For me as a Welsh actor, Richard Burton is one of my...

When you're doing a play, you're onstage, there's no stopping or starting, there's no stopping to reposition for the camera or have a check done. You're there 'till the end of the show. What that gives you is a great gift, which is to command the audience, and you get to play with your script and your fellow actors. Every night, it's different. Hopefully it goes well and you get a great response. But the technique that you have to have on film or television is so delicate. It's fine-tuning. That is very different from being onstage, but they both have important skill sets.

Aneurin Barnard

important giving night

As long as I'm enjoying what I'm doing, then that's fine. That's what I want. I want to enjoy life. We're only here for a small ride, so it may as well be a good one. If I can go to work enjoying what I do, then my life becomes a very nice one.

Aneurin Barnard

enjoy-life nice long

I used to just daydream all the time about being in movies, from the age of like, four onwards. I would sit down and watch movies with my father and my grandfather, and always pretended that I was in the stories.

Aneurin Barnard

age watches father

Every day is a work day, and I have to work my ass off just as much as any other guy, doing whatever job they're doing. I believe in commitment and hard work, and hopefully, after that, success comes.

Aneurin Barnard

hard-work jobs believe

For me, the key is always trying to find the connection between the audience and the character I'm playing. That's important to me, in any work I do.

Aneurin Barnard

always-trying keys character

I'm a big believer in playing truth and not doing things for effect. It's not about whether you look pretty or glamorous. It's about whether people connect.

Aneurin Barnard

bigs people looks

I want to be challenged. Every job I've done so far, every character has been completely different and that's really important to me because I don't want to fall into a stereotypical box.

Aneurin Barnard

jobs character fall

A good actor knows exactly what the camera wants, what the sound wants, where to find the light and how to tell a good through line and journey.

Aneurin Barnard

journey

I believe that the greatest music is storytelling anyway, in a heightened medium. So I write a lot of music, and I play a lot with my guitar, I still sing a lot, but now I'm more personal about it than public, in a way. I think there will be a time where I'd like to bring the singing back into some of my performances. It all depends if the material's right, if the story's right, if it's my kind of taste in music, as well. It means so much to me. We all know how affective music can be, I just want to make sure when I do it, I'm doing it because I actually feel it and I care about it.

Aneurin Barnard

writing mean believe

The biggest thing about me, as an actor, is I'm never a finished product, you know? I always want to try something or be in a new genre because, one, it's much more fun to do that because you're not doing the same thing over and over. One of the greatest reasons is that it keeps stretching you as an actor. So, hopefully, my method is that it makes me a better actor, and a more believable actor, so then, the more experience I have in any way possible, in a drama or a musical genre, different formats of working, the better I can be on all different platforms.

Aneurin Barnard

musical fun drama

I don't approach my acting as just saying a few lines and then going off-screen. It's a craft. I really invest in trying to make it a craft.

Aneurin Barnard

crafts acting trying

Of course, every actor has their box and you have to respect and play for it, but I do love challenging myself. I love every role to be new, and I always like to bring a freshness to every character I play.

Aneurin Barnard

challenges play character

I like being on a set where you can make decisions and everything is involved and are happy to work together to make the best work. For me, it's all about making the best work and creative people working together and all being respected and all having their opinions of what gives it the best quality is important.

Aneurin Barnard

best me you work

Bond is actually my dream role. Only because it was the film I watched with my grandfathers and father from a very young age, and it would be the only way that I could actually repay them with my art form for what they've done for me.

Aneurin Barnard

me age father art

I came from a very, very small valley in the middle of South Wales. I grew up there with my father, who's a coal miner, and my mother worked in a normal factory.

Aneurin Barnard

valley small mother father

I remember watching 'A Streetcar Named Desire' when I was quite young, I was about 12, or 13, and I watched it, thinking, 'Wow. That is pretty cool. I'd like to do something like that.'

Aneurin Barnard

cool desire remember thinking

When I was a kid, I used to pretend to be Bond; I used to make up scenarios and irritate my sister and annoy my mother and father pretending to be someone else, so I kind of was already acting when I was a child. I just didn't really know it.

Aneurin Barnard

bond sister mother father

Richard Burton is my number one idol. One, because we come from very similar backgrounds and two, because of his fantastic talent.

Aneurin Barnard

idol because talent two

I always used to pretend to be different characters - cowboys, that sort of thing. I used to think that the Indians lived over the mountains that I could see out of my bedroom. As I grew up, I started to understand that acting was actually a craft, and there was no question about it, that was exactly what I was going to do.

Aneurin Barnard

pretend mountains understand think

I do my own stunts; that's something I'm very passionate about. I spent a lot of time on boats as a kid, so it's just nice to be able to put that into use in the job that I do.

Aneurin Barnard

job my-own nice time

For me as a Welsh actor, Richard Burton is one of my biggest idols. And I've got so many: Peter O'Toole, Laurence Olivier and Oliver Reed. If they got 'Hunky Dory' and 'Citadel' offered to them, they would do completely different jobs on both of them.