"They were like, no, no, no, he's too well known. He might be difficult, he might be this, he might be that. — Troy was so spot on, he was the only person who was not imitating Harrison Ford."
This Firezide Friday we're talking to Tom Keegan, the cutscene director responsible for making the modern Wolfenstein games hit you like a punch in the gut. We talk about what goes into good direction on a video game, the technical limitations of working on a volume, what it’s like to work with some of the biggest names, and more.
How Troy Baker ended up playing Indiana Jones.
How working on Powerpuff Girls got Tom ready to take on Star Wars.
Why Debra Wilson is his favourite actor.
What it’s like to direct a scene that lives almost entirely in the imagination.
How improv made one scene in Star Wars: Jedi jump off the screen.
👉 Watch the video (Unfortunately, Tom's camera quality was negatively impacted by a poor internet connection, but it worth every minute to watch it anyway.)
👇 Read the interview below.
Enjoy!
Kirk and the Firezide Chat team
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Tom Keegan
OCCUPATION: Performance capture/voice over director.
AGE: “Older than you think!”
BASED: Los Angeles.
BACKGROUND: Worked as an actor before finding a job as lore master for children’s cartoons. Eventually found his place as a cutscene director for video games, where he’s worked on series like Star Wars: Jedi and Wolfenstein.
Kirk McKeand: Can you explain what you do now?
Tom Keegan: Sure. I direct voiceover and performance capture for games. In case you don't know, it is kind of like the way they make Avatar. So people are in suits, and they have a head cam on, and the suits have reflectors on them, little glowing balls, and then the acting is done in scenes, basically full motion. A face cam records their face, their voice is actually recorded live, and then used in the final product.
I direct a lot of voiceover. I would say that's probably 75% of the work I do, sort of like the day job, and then you know another 25% is performance capture, which I love. That takes a lot more prep. It is more time-consuming. Usually, it involves travel. I direct a lot of stuff in Europe, and I live in L.A. But it's good. I love it.
You work with MachineGames a lot, right? .
Yes. Indiana Jones, most recently. I've done all the modern Wolfensteins, the New Colossus, the New Order, and a couple of small in-between games.
How did you feel when you first saw Troy Baker's take on Indiana?
Well, it was actually my idea.
Oh really?
Yeah, because when we were casting it, I just went: ‘Troy Baker’. There was a lot of pushback. They were like, no, no, no, he's too well known. I was like, okay, so we auditioned a whole round of people, and we didn't find anybody we really like, and it was like: ‘Troy Baker’. So they were like, ‘Okay, you could try it, but I don't know. He might be difficult. He might be this. He might be that. He's too well known.’
Troy was so spot on, and he was like the only person who was not imitating Harrison Ford. He was the character. He was doing a voice match for the character Indiana Jones that Harrison Ford created, but he was living in the character rather than imitating the character.
Was there anything you had to do to help him get there? Did he ever tip over that line into impersonation or anything?
Um, you know, once in a while it would tip over into Troy a little bit, and that happens. I mean, you know, you've got 1000s and 1000s of lines of dialog, and so sometimes it would be just a little bit of voice tweak. Harrison Ford has a little bit of a midwestern sound, like a Wisconsin sound, and sometimes it's a little bit higher, more nasally. So sometimes it just would be tweaking it a little bit.
One of the most fun parts of doing that game was the first 10 minutes, which is a shot by shot recreation of Raiders of the Lost Ark, and that was completely fun to do – to look at that first 10 minutes of the film, take it apart. Of course, it wasn't just me – it was like a whole team, right? A whole cinematics team reverse engineering how that shot was done, breaking up the shots. Then in performance capture, I'm actually watching a silent version of that off camera, and then Troy's there, and I'm like, ‘...And you're reaching’ – that one where he's sort of reaching under the beam of light, and then the arrow goes right by his head. Harrison Ford got into the position, sort of twisted himself around, and I'm like, ‘...And reach, reach slower, slower, two, three,’ and that was really fun. Sometimes I'd be like, ‘slower, slower’, and Troy’s like, ‘I did it slower’, and I'm like, ‘no, no, look, I have the proof right here’, but he was really awesome to work with.
I know that was an easy and solvable small conflict, but you must have conflicts with actors a lot. How do you resolve those?
I don't actually have a lot of conflicts with actors. I think because my approach is just to I I let the actor do it their way first, and then we do what in directing terminology is called an adjustment, which is different from a direction. An adjustment is just like: do what you're doing, but try it a little bit more like this. And so it's really working with what they're bringing to it, and of course, a lot of it is casting. A lot of it is, and especially for performance capture, casting is pretty rigorous because their movement and their voice are equally important. And a lot of times, especially if I'm auditioning somebody via Zoom, it's really difficult to get a real feeling for how they move.
On pushing to cast Troy Baker as Indiana Jones:
“‘He might be difficult. He might be this. He might be that. He's too well known.’ Troy was so spot on, and he was like the only person who was not imitating Harrison Ford.”
So we usually, as much as possible, try to audition people live, and then I get a feeling for how they respond to my suggestions. Are they super rigid? Are they more flexible? Because you really have to be flexible in video games. I mean, I remember one project that I did – Battlefield 1 – and we do something at the beginning called the vertical slice, and one of the actors had been cast as a particular role in the vertical slice. The weekend before starting the vertical slice on a Monday. On the weekend, the writers all got fired, they rewrote the vertical slice. We came in on Monday, and the actor’s there, and he had auditioned as a southern writer, and it was no longer that. And he was like, ‘Am I, am I still a southern writer?’ I'm like, "Just be yourself, just just run with it.’ And that might happen in a game. Everything could change. Something from design could change, and so in a video game, you can't be rigid. It might change.
I remember you talking about the physicality of actors before in performance capture. Is it Brian Bloom, who you worked with on Wolfenstein, still one of the best physical actors you've worked with?
Absolutely. I mean, you know, Brian is just-I-I'll never forget watching him kind of, you know, pack a gun, getting ready for battle, and just looking at him and going, ‘Thank God we have somebody like him.’ He just brings so much to it.
Troy Baker was extremely physical. I feel like all the actors that I work with and that I select, and because it's so rigorous, they are physically oriented.
If you've been in the suit, even if you've been in it once, you know how much movement is a part of it. And there's something about that suit. When people get in the suit and then they look up on the monitor, and they see their skeleton or they see what's called a real time, which is like an early version of their character. And they're moving around and they're going oh, and they move their leg up or whatever. And sometimes then their leg is jittery and it's sort of going back and forth in a weird way. And they realise how physical it is by just seeing themselves and seeing how when they move how the character responds. So I think that's a key part of it. There's something about the suit that engenders this feeling of like, oh I want to move. Also, the spaces are so big in the volume, which is what they call the stage where performance capture is done, and the weapons are weighted – physically you can imagine you're in this situation.
There's the flip side of that as well, though. They need their imaginations too, because like we just saw with that God of War reveal, they've got that actor pretending to be a gelatinous cube, and there's a lot of that happening, right?
Especially if you're in a vehicle and you're in this wooden framework, because everything has to be open, right? Because the cameras in motion capture both receive light and project light. And so the light that they project bounces off the little balls, and then that that light is captured by the camera. So everything has to be kind of an open framework, so that light isn't occluded.
So let's say you're in a vehicle and you have this framework of sticks, and you might have one of those IKEA stools upside down as your steering wheel. It's fun in a way. In Star Wars, we'd have these keyboards, like you're in the ship. I have a little picture right here of us on the Mantis, and you can see it's just like a wooden framework, and on the side we might have a little panel with a piece of PVC piping with a switch that goes up and down for going into warp drive. Sometimes it's fun to sit in the seat and flip the switches up and down, and you know, pump the thing.
Also, if there's something for the actor to touch, it's really good. So sometimes there's a little frame of a door, and we'll have the actor put their hand on it. But they have to be really careful not to put their hand around it, otherwise, then their hand will go through the shape of the door. But it's an interesting technique.
It's funny because you've done quite a lot of licensed things now. And it's almost as if your early career with you know Powerpuff Girls and that stuff doing the bible kind of set you up for that because there's a lot of rules you have to follow when you're dealing with say Star Wars or Indiana Jones, right?
I've had very good experiences with the people from Lucas. They've always been incredibly helpful in terms of knowing what the canon is, especially something like Star Wars, which is so sprawling and continues to grow. They have these knowledge folks, and they'll be there monitoring our rehearsals and our shoots just to say, ‘Oh, you can't change that to that because in the comic in the '90s, this was said’ – they know all the rules. Too hard for me to track it. So I'm very happy to have the knowledge holders who know what you can and can't do.
On the threat of generative AI:
“Right now, actors are having to be super cautious about AI and AI usage of their likeness – the contracts that the big companies want actors to sign in terms of allowing their likeness and their voice to be used by AI.”
Part of the process of doing something dramatically is experimenting, right? And so, like filmmaker Ron Shelton said: ‘We prepare to make a movie, we prepare and we prepare and we prepare so that we can improvise on camera.’ Because there's something magical that happens with the actors, and I always try to tell my animation teams, ‘I like your storyboard, but just know that it might change.’ And that's where, if there is a canon, you kind of need an advisor because you want the actors to feel that they have freedom. You want fun accidents to happen.
One time we were working on Wolfenstein, and we were talking about sneaking, and you know if you're if you're in covert mode in some way. There's the cliche of sneaking, which is kind of like, I'm gonna kind of hunch over, and I was saying that I had studied people sneaking or myself sneaking, and it's really like people try to look normal but inconspicuous, right? They try to look invisible. So we were fooling around with that and then we did this thing where Set Roth has this electronic microwave field. Brian actually played a Nazi soldier, [and did the exaggerated sneak] in the middle of it. And that just came up from our fooling around.
Can you remember any more times people have improvised something that's made the scene perfect?
In Jedi sort of Jedi: Fallen Order, Cal is always going out and having you know adventures and meeting up with people and and his main mentor, Cere, she has concealed some facts about herself and about her backstory from him, especially concerning her old Padawan, Trilla. And Cal goes out and he has an encounter with Trilla, and she tells him some stuff about Cere. Cere is kind of like his mentor and his mom, and so we were always having these things back on the deck where you know people would meet up in the same little set of couches, and they'd say, ‘Well, what happened while you were out there?’ So I was like, ‘Can we do something different? Can we have a family dinner, have them seated at a table?’ So we did. We had a family dinner, and then Daniel, who plays Greez, was doing this funny thing with the salt. They're having this very tense conversation. He's just watching them, and he's putting more salt, and he's putting more salt, and he's putting more salt, and we kept it in. If you ever look at it, like he's just he's he's constantly constantly shaking the salt shaker, but it's simple things like that.
What's the best thing about your job?
Oh, you know, it's really getting to work with actors, and entering into that spirit of doing a fun thing, we're playing, and yet at the same time, we have this opportunity to bring these characters to life and to reflect some kind of truth. And I always feel like that's the opportunity that video games have given me – an ability to bring some humanity to these characters that will then be experienced by literally millions and millions of players.
Which actor do you admire the most?
Debra Wilson, hands down. She’s like my muse. She started out on television. She was on Mad TV for many years, and she just is a very intense person. We're good friends, and she doesn't hold back, and I love that about her. But as an actor, she's incredibly disciplined, and she really listens and really takes every adjustment very seriously and is very open. And if she disagrees, she'll say so. But you know, she'll also give it a go. She's been in almost every one of my games, and I just adore working with her. There’s a reason she’s in everything because she’s so good.
She's probably one of the most recognisable faces as well because not only is she in everything as an actor, but they use her face a lot of the time. Which, you know, that's becoming more common now, but it wasn't really that common before.
Yeah. It's interesting because, especially right now, actors are having to be super cautious about AI and AI usage of their likeness – the contracts that the big companies want actors to sign in terms of allowing their likeness and their voice to be used by AI. Everywhere I go in the world, people in the business or artists are talking about it. What's going to happen? What ways are moving? What are you being asked to do? What kind of compensation are you being offered? I mean, this is-I would say it's the number one conversation that artists are having.
How do you feel about the whole thing?
I'm old school. I love actors. It's my personal opinion, and this is probably naive, but even if we go through a period of time where there's more AI actors, I think we're going to come back to the physical actor because at the end of the day, it's going to be cheaper. They have all the data. They don't require a giant power and data system somewhere. It's a human being, and there's something about human beings that other human beings respond to.
On working with Lucas on Star Wars:
“They have these knowledge folks, and they'll be there monitoring our rehearsals and our shoots just to say, ‘Oh, you can't change that to that because in the comic in the '90s, this was said’ – they know all the rules.”
I was just listening to an article in the car. An article that I wanted to read, and they had a thing that said listen to this article, but it was an AI voice, and it was okay, but at moments it was just horrible. It was like there was no opinion at all. There was no subtext to what the voice was reading, and there were some weird glitches. Like you know, if there was a if it said U.S. they would stop as if it was the end of a sentence. It's just like things like that are incredibly annoying and just reminds you that this isn't a person, and it blands everything out. I'm not a huge fan.
The thing is, man, I don't think most people are. I don't think I've met a single person in real life who loves it. It just seems to be these people. You know, a few months ago they were crypto guys or they were NFT guys, and now they're AI guys.
Totally. Well, I mean, the amount of money that people are pouring into it is insane. If you are an AI engineer, the amount of money you can get is crazy. And I think people just sort of go like, ‘Well, I'll take the money now while I can get it.’ But you know, I just wonder how people can sleep at night knowing that they're eliminating people's jobs en masse. Years ago, it was called machine learning. We weren't calling it AI; we were calling machine learning. And somebody said to me, ‘Oh, X company is working on machine learning, and you should get in on it.’ And I was like, ‘Why?’ I mean, why would I want to do that? So I can pull switches and make a machine do the performance?
As a director I'm really anti the puppet master mentality. I have a book. I'm going to plug it, The Complete Guide to Video Game Performance Directing. I talk about how if you're going to direct actors, you have to get away from the puppet master idea, the idea that they're a tool. That's not how it works. A good director understands the story, and they understand the bones of the story and the bones of the scene, and they help tweak what the actor is doing so that it tells the story and brings the story to life. I've been to some video game companies where, especially even with voice work, it's sort of like, oh, the actor is like a floor polishing machine, and we rented it for four hours, and so let's run it. You know, we did the kitchen, we did the dining room, we did all the things we wanted to do, but you know, let's take it outside since we still have it for a little while longer. Doesn't work that way.
Well, like you said before, those little moments that come from a human just riffing on something wouldn't happen.
Yeah, totally wouldn't happen. Totally would not.
What’s the worst thing about your job?
The worst thing. Well, I would say the worst thing is that I still have to fight for time and space to explore with the actors, and I think that's any job – you're fighting the bean counters for a little bit of breathing room. In a video game the performance isn't the central means of telling the story – it's one of them.
People tend to discount the actors in a certain way. Even like last year, I was in the UK and I was giving a workshop, and I was saying, if you don't know, ask questions. I always tell actors here's the questions to ask, because a lot of times video game scripts don't have any identifying information about what's happening in the scene, and these actors were saying, ‘Yeah, we do ask, but sometimes they just say, 'I don't know, nobody knows. Just say the lines.’ And it's like, why would you use voices if it's so generic? It's like throwing whatever spices on top of what you're cooking, without having any idea what they taste like or how they're going to go together. And that still happens. And although I will say, when I started, that happened a lot more, and it's happening less, and there are more people and more companies that understand how to work with actors, but still, too often, developers aren't understanding what actors need.
Where did you grow up?
So I grew up in the New York area. I was born in New York City, and then early formative years in the Bronx, which is part of New York City, and then sort of suburbs, New York, upstate New York, New York City, and then moved out to L.A. in the late '80s.
Did you do that to get into the field you're in now, or were you looking to get into another field?
Yeah, I was an actor, writer, director, more for theater. I moved out here to get into the industry a little bit more – you know, the film TV industry – and that happened a little bit. I did some TV commercials and stuff. I did a short film. I did a movie, and then just by accident, I got into video games, and here I am.
What was that first accident then?
I got into animation because I had a friend who had a small animation company, and I was the computer guy because that was back in the days when you could be the computer guy if you knew how to work it. We were doing cell animation, and I learned a lot about animation, and then through them I got a job at Hanna-Barbera in the early days of Cartoon Network, being the development assistant, so I would take the pitches. I would update the bibles.
The Bible is this thing that says all the rules for the show, the characters, the environment. So we were doing Powerpuff Girls, Johnny Bravo. It was really fun, and then that got sold to Time Warner, and everybody got fired.
I went with my boss over to Universal, and that was very boring. They didn't have anything good. And one day, the Hollywood Reporter fell open, and it was an ad, and it said, ‘Have you done theater? Do you do voices?’ So, I ended up getting this job in kids' educational software, and never looked back.
What did your parents do, Tom?
My father was in Sales, and my mom was basically a housewife. Although later she was an HR person, human resources for various companies. But you know, classic mid-century folks. Suburban white, you know, middle class upbringing. Yeah.
What was school like then? Were you a theater kid in school as well?
Oh, totally, totally. I was a good student. I liked school, and yeah, it's funny because I always wanted to be in plays, and I used to say that any day that was a good day, I would call a school play day, right? It was like we're going to do some sort of a play, and that's that feeling, you know, when you get up and you can't wait for your feet to hit the floor.
On being a strange child:
“When I saw the movie Mary Poppins, I became obsessed with having an umbrella and jumping off a wall and trying to float.”
When I was in high school, I was into various things, but not necessarily theater. And one day we missed the school bus coming home, and we could take the late bus. My friend said, ‘Oh, they're having auditions for a play. You want to go?’ And I was like, ‘Sure, why not?’ I was so cavalier about the thing that would become the most important thing in my life. I got a role. He didn't. And then I ended up doing a lot of theater in high school. I was in a sort of intra high school Shakespeare troupe, and then I went to college for theater. I always say like I'm lucky I got to do the thing I always wanted to do.
Did you ever get teased for it when you were grown up?
You know, possibly, but I just think I was immune to it. I was really an oddball. When I saw the movie Mary Poppins, I became obsessed with having an umbrella and jumping off a wall and trying to float. I memorised all the songs, and I would sit at the back of the school bus and I would sing the songs and I would take requests from other kids, like, and imitate the voices of the singers in the songs.
When I think about that now, I'm just like, what? It was kind of mind blowing, and then I had a very interior life as a teenage boy, and until I got back into doing plays. I was not sports oriented, and that was difficult. I didn't get the ball gene. I love moving. I always loved gymnastics or skiing or running or swimming or anything moving through space. But anything regarding a ball, I don't understand what people find fascinating about throwing a little thing around or kicking it or whatever. I kind of like watching volleyball because to me that's exciting.
What's the best bit of life advice you've heard?
Well, it's one that I like to give, which is: just open the next door. Like whatever door is in front of you, just open that door and don't worry about what's coming after. Just just go through that door, and that's enough. Keep it simple.
What bad habits do you have?
The worst habit that I have that I really do not like about myself is just getting caught on my phone, and I'm a news hound, and you know going down rabbit holes and reading reading stuff, and I just hate that. The hours go by. I'm like, ah, what a waste! What a complete waste!
I think we all have the capacity to just relax when we get the chance.
Yeah, It feels like you're relaxing, right? Like you're turning off. I think we turn off the decision making, which is very stressful, right? And just you know, read somebody else's decisions, but we're pulled into hooks, and you know the whole the whole online thing is all about right hooks about attention,
It's reducing all entertainment right down to little bits. Looking at reels, and there are people doing funny stuff, people are doing interesting stuff, but it's all it's down to this. I mean, if you're working in games, if you're directing games or writing games, you have to be able to think in long form. Even though scenes are short, it’s a long story, the narrative in a game.
What time do you get up and go to bed?
I get up generally around 6am. Sometimes earlier, sometimes a little bit later, sometimes seven. I'm an early to bed person. I'm down by like 9:30, and a lot of times I will wake up at like 3:30 in the morning. I'll have that 3:30 in the morning thing. I think a lot of people do, where I lay awake and ruminate over every issue of my life, but I'm getting better at managing that. I'm really trying to get a better work life balance now. I have a daughter, and I have a husband, and our daughter has a family, and she's having a baby, and so I'm trying to put more energy into real life relationships, also friends. It's really easy, especially even in a place like LA, where you have to really drive to get together with other people, it's really easy to lose touch with people.
Absolutely, yes. I think post COVID as well, it's even worse. It's like we've almost all drifted apart somehow. You know, just that isolation.
Yeah, yeah. If I think of someone, I try to send them a note or just to reach out and say hi. I try to especially keep up with my friends and my family that aren't in the business because I know a lot of people. I know a lot of people in the games industry, and they tend to be my everyday friends. At the same time, you know, I'm a job giver, and that can sometimes be a lonely position because there's always a question: Is someone really your friend, or do they just need work? And I genuinely love the people I'm working with, but you know I like to balance out with the people who want absolutely nothing from me except you know my friendship, and that means a lot to me at this point in my life.
What's the best book you’ve read recently?
I read so many books, and I read them in little bits. It takes me a while. I just read this book by this writer. It was a mystery. I love mysteries because they're fun. They're engaging. They're not real, it was Harlan Coben, called Nobody's Fool. It was so good. I like sci-fi. I love Philip Pullman.
I really love His Dark Materials (that used to be called the Golden Triangle), Philip Pullman trilogy. I love Robert Heinlein. I love sort of you know old sci-fi stuff, but I do love to read. And as I said, I read a lot of news. I read a lot of magazine articles. I'm like a news hound, like a reading junkie. But reading is my favorite thing to do. You know, a lot of times at the end of a day, when I've been working with actors all day, it's like I can't watch a TV show or a movie. I can't watch performance because I just can't stop seeing the choices that they're making or the directors making. So then I love reading.
You kind of make the choices in your head when you're reading a book, don't you?
Yeah, you're making your own choices. You're looking at the language that the writer uses. I love exercise. I run. I do yoga. I'm into Buddhist meditation. I put a fair amount of time into that, into you know, kind of looking at my own mind. I'm into something called dark retreat. So last year I spent three days in a dark room alone on a retreat, and it was incredible. It was mind blowing, and so this year I'm going to do a seven day dark retreat.
That's just put in isolation in prison, isn't it? That's the same thing.
Yeah, a lot of that came up. It was sort of like, oh, I'm a prisoner here. I feel like a prisoner. I feel like a victim. Whatever. I'm in this room, but at the same time, I can just walk out of here. I'm not locked in. I could leave at any time. You know, it's self-imposed prison. It's kind of like withdrawing. So you're withdrawing visual lights.
Like sensory deprivation tanks, right?
Except you're in a room, right? You're in a room. It has a bed, and you get food. There's a bathroom, and you start to hallucinate. After like an hour, I was hallucinating, seeing all kinds of cool things, crazy things, and also seeing a kind of light coming from the top of my head. It wasn't lighting up my physical space, but it was lighting up my visual space, and it's just this feeling that my consciousness is larger than my body and larger than myself. It really helped me kind of come to terms with death in a way, less afraid of death, more feeling like oh I'm a, I'm a pure spirit, in some way. My mind, my mind could be as clear as crystal without all the distractions. So that was really great. Because my daily life, my work in games, requires so much mental concentration and focus, and sometimes at the end of the day, I'm not necessarily physically tired. Although I do talk a lot, I talk all day, but it's just focus. Like you know, when I'm directing, if I'm directing voiceover, it's line after line after line after line. I have to be there at every moment, from nine to one, two to six, you know, and at the end of the day and before the day, I'm prepping the next project, right? So there's so much mental focus and creativity that sometimes I just need to really clear my mind.
Okay, I can kind of relate to that. Like I have a social battery, you know. If I go to an event and I'm talking to people from the minute I get up and then I'm partying and that, the next day I'd love to just sit in my room, you know, and recharge that social battery. So I get where you're coming from.
Yeah, and also the same thing with people, right? I'm around people, I'm around actors, or if I'm auditioning, sometimes when I'm auditioning actors, at the end of the day, if I'm walking along the street, everybody I see looks like an actor. It's like they're playing a role. So you know, just kind of withdrawing can be very balancing.
Well, you said about the spirit and stuff. So I'm not a spiritual person. I'm not religious, but energy can't be destroyed. That's a scientific fact. So I think whether you're cremated or buried, you either become heat or you become part of dirt. You know, one way or the other. So yeah, there's something in that. There's something in it for sure.
Yeah, well, you know, it's interesting in a dark retreat because I saw that there are multiple dimensions.
You sure you weren't taking something, Tom?
They didn't put something in the food, and like, absolutely sure. And that was the cool thing about it, right? It was like, well, I could have gone to Central America and done ayahuasca or something like that. This was like I'm hallucinating, but I'm not high. And at one point, I looked up and I was seeing the night sky. I was seeing as clear as you would look outside and see it. And I'm and I'm thinking, wow! I know I'm in a room with a ceiling, and that was the difference, right? It's like I know I'm not crazy. I know what's happening, and I see that there's like you know… reality is dimensional. Just put it that way.
I mean, it's one of the scientific theories that I'm not against for sure.
Yeah.
I feel like if there's an answer for déjà vu, that's what it is. You know.
Right. Yeah. It's like Everything, Everywhere, All At Once. There's something about experiencing things that changes your perspective so much. It's interesting because in acting, the power of your imagination is really how you tap into that in acting, and I would say that in directing as well. Someone can have something in their mind and relive it under imaginary circumstances so brilliantly, so realistically, that it blows your mind. I mean, the actors that I work with every day are so good, and I admire them so much. And people don't really understand how difficult a life it is to be an actor.
Well, they're tapping into the dark memories sometimes, aren't they?
Absolutely. You would give anything to be able to do this work. That's how I always felt as an actor. Also, it's like money doesn't matter if I get to act. Because you're touching this space of consciousness, and you're exploring these realms inside yourself. You're bringing realms inside yourself out into a room with other people who are also touching these realms inside themselves at the same time, and then you're seeing what happens. Sparks happen between actors, or sparks happen in a role, and then your writers set up the situation for you and give you lines to say. And there's just something amazing about that whole experience.
When was the last time you cried, Tom?
About a week ago, I would say. It was a family, a family situation that I was in. I was alone, and it was like a part of me felt so awkward in it that I just needed to release some energy. It was good, very good.
Yeah, sometimes you know it builds up for so long. It can be just something that you wouldn't usually cry at. That flips the switch as well, right?
Yeah, sometimes it's from happiness. Also, you know, sometimes you cry from happiness. Something happens that's so moving, or it just takes you by surprise, or someone surprises you in a way that can move you, or you know, in a movie or TV show or something like that, or a book.
Something that's really important to me is fatherhood. And now that I have grandchildren, it's sort of like another chance to practice fathering, and it just brings it out in me anyway. It just brings out such a part of me that's so loving and unconditional. It can really test you, and you know the patience that it requires, but it rewires your brain. It gives you a big why. It gives you a big reason for living. I think that's spiritual in a way. I think that's the essence of spirituality – having a big why and feeling fulfilled.
So back to spirituality again. How do you want to be remembered when you pass away?
I would like to be remembered. I don't know. I think for the guidance that I've given people, that feels like the biggest contribution that I've given. You know, like my acting directing students, my actors, my kid, my grandchildren, just by being myself.
What would you have on your gravestone?
Not gonna have a gravestone. Cremated.
Where will you get your ashes thrown?
Probably in the Pacific Ocean, but it's really up to my survivors – whatever's convenient for them.
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Firezide Chat is produced by Smartfeed Studios. It is our belief that a well-crafted set of seemingly simple questions can reveal more about a person’s inner life than a conventional interview. Every episode delivers life advice, a surprise, and hopefully a good laugh
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