What his novel reveals
It’s about the absurd treatment of celebrity. I rip myself to pieces. It took eight years of painstaking work and of prose, of poetry and it’s something beautiful to me. It’s wild. It’s the best thing I’ve ever done. It will tell you a lot about me.
His process as a painter
When I face a canvas, it’s me and God and the inspiration that comes through directly. And my subconscious mind has a lot to do with what happens on a canvas or a sculpture. I often find out later what my subconscious intended. I have a plan going in and then suddenly a year later I go, ‘Wow! There was a whole other agenda there.’
His hero
Dick Van Dyke
The downside of acting
You don’t get to keep your sanity. Acting is a weird sacrifice. You harness the most painful depths of grief and loneliness and anger and joy. It’s a weird thing to do, it’s an odd thing to do. And often you get to a point where you will be so touched by it that you can’t actually go on (laughs) and you have to stop because it affects you in such a deep way.
Donald Trump
I don’t know who that is. That name escapes me, I have heard it, it’s familiar. Is he an important person? The worst thing that you can do for narcissists is to continue to talk about them.
The first person he ever impersonated
Jerry Lewis
Where his comedic ability came from
My father. He was a very animated character. He didn’t just tell the story, he became the characters. So, I would sit back and look at him and go, ‘Wow. That’s really something to be.’ Because everyone who came to our home was galvanised by my father when he told a story and they often left with pee stains (laughs). They’d say, ‘Percy, you missed your calling, you missed your calling.’ Well, I became his calling.
His morning routine
I appreciate the morning more than I used to. I get up in the morning, put my shoes on and I head out in a direction that might see me at 6AM before the streets get busy. Sometimes I’m on roller blades or my electric bike and I go whizzing through Beverly Hills. I make everything part of the fun. And then I go home, I cook my own breakfast which is what I learned on The Bad Batch. I also like to talk to homeless people. It’s a good start to the day.