Actors are always afraid of ending up like overcooked old soup over time. What's risky is that you don't realize this has happened, and you just get thick and boring. Going abroad was like getting a new pot to cook everything again. I was a rookie, a new self. And they were asking me, 'Who are you?'
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the fear of stagnation and the rejuvenating power of new experiences.
Ken Watanabe reflects on the fear actors have of becoming stale and uninteresting over time, likening this to being overcooked soup. He shares his personal experience of going abroad, which revitalized his creativity and self-identity, allowing him to rediscover who he was as an artist.
In practice
In a motivational speech about pursuing new experiences to avoid stagnation.
I can't become another person, no matter how much makeup I wear. Something of your own past, your experiences and personality always comes out in the role, and that makes acting very risky. You're exposed. You always wonder if you can pull it off.
To speak today of a famous novelist is like speaking of a famous cabinetmaker or speedboat designer. Adjective is inappropriate to noun.
If the writing is honest it cannot be separated from the man who wrote it.
Failure and its accompanying misery is for the artist his most vital source of creative energy.
Who made art history? Not the most reasonable people. The mad men did. If painting is the mirror of a time, it must be mad to have a true image of what that time is. To one madness we oppose another madness.
After all perhaps the greatness of art lies in the perpetual tension between beauty and pain, the love of men and the madness of creation, unbearable solitude and the exhausting crowd, rejection and consent.
The next step in sculpture is motion.
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