What have you been up to recently?
I've been travelling a lot between London, Paris and New York this summer doing fashion weeks and several jobs, and I work on my music and other ideas in any spare time I may have.
Modelling, with it's varying hours, luckily gives you the chance to do things you're interested in, so I find myself playing my guitar and writing a lot in the down-time. I love playing music anywhere and time, to anybody! I moved to London originally a couple of years back after getting a degree in performance, and after a little while I fell into modelling. I originally had the idea to move to Los Angeles for acting on a massive whim, but I ended up going to London instead to get a feel for what I might be in for. I love performance in general and the feeling you get when you are performing in front of people, or watching something really amazing. Like when you do Shakespeare. It's so full and rich. Everytime you act Shakespeare you feel this fire, and it's so dramatic and everything feels emphasised. So I was really drawn to performance and how impactful people's presence can be, and how you can communicate with people through performance. Acting is a great way to get into that magic state and a way to really connect with people. It's an amazing state to be in and you feel amazing. During this I was always a singer, and with singing, even if you're all alone whilst doing it, if you're belting out that song, it's an amazing feeling and can bring you to that same state.
How did you learn how to play the guitar?
When I was 14 I had two weeks of lessons, but I didn't connect with it because I wasn't learning anything I could sing. So I picked it up a few years later and taught myself my favourite songs. As a child I was a bit crazed. I had to keep moving and doing different things. I remember my whole childhood being this big fuzz as I couldn't focus on anything. But the one thing I could focus all my energy on was singing and acting. So I was singing all my life, and I started doing musicals and theatre. Then I borrowed my mates guitar for a while and started learning chords. I started by learning one song. Once I could play that I learned another, and after each song I mastered I got better and better. (There's a lot of impromptu guitar playing during this part of the interview which is great for us). Then I started to put the different chords together into new songs.
What do you write about when you're writing songs?
I get to this point where my head is so full of one thing, one feeling or one idea, that it has to come out. Then I start playing and put some chords together, get some frustrations out and words start coming out, just sing whatever I'm thinking.
Is there a story behind the song you have been sharing today?
Every song I write comes from personal experiences or things that have inspired me. Most are written about the way I'm seeing things at the moment, or how a particular experience is playing out in my head.
Music and Acting is like a study of human beings and the things we think and feel, and I love that. I live entirely in my own little world. Some people come in and out of that world. Some people's worlds are so similar to mine that they're almost touching, but I just find it really interesting the way we all interact with each other, and that's mostly the reason I do any sort of performance.
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