Stephen Moyer
Stephen Moyer
Stephen Moyer is an English film and television actor and director who is best known as vampire Bill Compton in the HBO series True Blood. Moyer's first television role was in 1993 as Philip Masefield in the TV adaptation of the play Conjugal Rites, written by actor/playwright Roger Hall. This was followed by the television film Lord of Misrule, filmed in Fowey, Cornwall, which also featured Richard Wilson, Emily Mortimer and Prunella Scales. In 1997, Moyer made his big-screen debut...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionTV Actor
Date of Birth11 October 1969
CityBrentwood, England
It's so funny when you're actually directing because things start popping that you don't expect to pop, and something that you think is going to pop, maybe doesn't quite have the impetus that you thought it might.
I'm not a very violent dude, and if something can be settled without any physicality, I'm always in favor of that. But if somebody comes near my kids, the atavistic crazy lion comes out.
A film that I love is 'Raising Arizona' and that's funny but it's quite indie and weird and odd and quirky. I'd love to do something like that. Who knows?
Film and theater are about misdirection and making the audience see something. I find it interesting. One of the things we do in 'True Blood' is shoot all of our stunts in camera. Instead of doing some kind of visual effect, we try to make it happen.
I did a lot of musicals when I was young and finally went to drama school to try and get away from doing musicals... and of course the first thing that happened when I got out is I got offered a musical. And then when I got to the Royal Shakespeare Company, which was my next job, I ended up doing a bloody musical!
Even if you know that what you'll say will hurt a woman's feelings, I've learned that it's better to be truthful with her than it is to cover up. Ultimate honesty is what a relationship is really about.
I was shocked the first time the paps got me in America - when a video camera is put in your face and you're asked questions and 15 people are walking backwards taking your picture. I was coming out of a pizza shop and had my daughter with me.
The interesting thing about 'True Blood' is that its appeal is not contained to teenage girls. I get stopped in the street and questioned by 70-year-old men whose wives and daughters are making Bloody Marys and throwing 'True Blood' parties.
If my missus is there and she approves of the person I get to bite boobs - and necks.
I didn't want to do film or commercials or television. That was cheap. That was selling out. I was the classic liberal, left-wing, 'Theater is going to change the world' kind of person. You know, very, very boring.
In London I had pear trees in my back garden, so I'd make my own pear and green tomato chutney.
I often think a lot of women's attraction to vampires is based on the fact that vampires come from centuries ago, from eras of chivalry and courtly virtues.
I was a mod when I was a kid. I'd be in Italian pencil-leg trousers with those bowling shoes you wear outside and a Fred Perry polo shirt with a V-neck sweater. It was like an Essex uniform - a very specific look.
There is a difference between looking all right in a shirt and taking the shirt off. The older that us dudes get, the more the paunch has to be worked on. It's hard.