Aidan Turner thinks actors should leave their roles on set: 'It doesn't serve anybody'

Aidan Turner spoke to Yahoo UK about his new role in Fifteen-Love and why he feels it's important not to go method with his acting.

Video transcript

ROXY SIMONS: This is quite a dark character, and he does have a lot of layers to him. I wonder, was it difficult to kind of shake off a character like that, who's so complex?

AIDAN TURNER: It's funny, you know, because I have this aversion to-- and I shouldn't. It's my own stuff. But like, an aversion to talking about acting and the actual method of doing it-- or, you know, for want of a better word than "method," maybe like, I don't know, the craft of doing it or something-- in that when it's talked about, I always feel like taking myself too seriously isn't the approach. And then talking about the craft I sometimes find awkward.

And what am I getting at? I'm getting at this. It's like, I was talking to my wife the other day about, you know, she's doing a play and it's quite dark at the moment. And she was talking about just how shaking that off is difficult because it stays with you. And like, how do you manage your mental health through these things? Especially doing a play. You're doing that eight shows a week, and it's a three-hour-- like, it's a lot. And it's going on for months and there's a lot going on.

And I-- I feel like it doesn't stick to me. Like, there's not a tenacity with the characters after I leave the set. But it's-- it does. It actually does stay with you. Like, it just-- it's-- I don't think you have control of those things. You don't-- you don't choose to live with it. But it's there. It's there a lot. And you try to protect yourself, I think, as an actor, to do the best you can to leave it. I don't think there's gains bringing stuff home and keeping-- you know, exploring that energy outside of the set. A lot of the time, I think it's exhausting and I think you can run out of the good things really quickly.

And I think I learned that early too. You know, wasting a lot of energy, thinking I'm doing a thing by maybe staying in character or keeping a feeling of the thing, and it's not. It just kind of-- just burns you out a bit and then you can't do the work as well, I find. So no, in response to your question, I think it's a conscious effort to sort of leave that stuff, especially with this darker thing, just to-- there's no value in bringing it into the car and on the way home and into your family. It doesn't serve anybody.