Zach Braff, interview

?That?s my favourite type of tone, where you can vacillate between belly laughing and turn a corner and something quite serious in someone?s life has happened.? The concept of a comedy about isolation comes, he doesn?t mind admitting, from a variegated world-view formed as one of life?s class clowns who uses laughs to gain approval.

?Oh, of course. I mean I?m not suicidal and I never have been, thank God, but I have battled these feelings. I have been on and off antidepressants at times in my life. Anyone who battles depression occasionally or all the time will tell you that you?re sort of stuck. Charlie talks about being in a pit and looking for a way out.?

By the time he landed the role in Scrubs at the age of 25 ? he is now 36 ? Braff had already been acting for more than a decade. Yet one lesson of the early years of his stop-start career has been to persevere. After attending film school at Northwestern University in Chicago and acting in a starry production of Macbeth on his return to New York, Braff had enough wind in his sails to take the plunge and move to LA. The failure of that move was captured in his script for Garden State.

?I couldn?t find my footing, I was working as a waiter, I wasn?t getting many callbacks on things. I was like, I left New York too soon.? Then New York called in the form of an audition for a new Edward Albee play in which his character would have to do full-frontal nudity and receive simulated fellatio. ?All I was thinking was: my grandma?s going to come and see this play.? Despite his misgivings, he flew cross-country for the audition, didn?t get it and was about to throw in the towel when his agent persuaded him to come back to LA for one last pilot season.

?And so I went back. First thing I went in on was Scrubs. Had I gotten this full-frontal Albee play getting fellatio eight times a week, I never would have been free to audition. And it was that decision that changed my whole life.?

All New People is in Manchester from Feb 8-11; Glasgow from Feb 14-18; Duke of York?s Theatre, London from Feb 22. For tickets see www.allnewpeople.co.uk

Source: http://telegraph.feedsportal.com/c/32726/f/568374/s/1c7ba68d/l/0L0Stelegraph0O0Cculture0Ctheatre0C90A666710CZach0EBraff0Einterview0Bhtml/story01.htm

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