Full interview is 16 minutes.
One important takeaway here is that quite a lot of Brits do learn to construct multiple characters and live various aspects of their life “in character”.
This is powerful because you can play a different character at work than you do with your mates, same for family, etc.
It’s very easy to do, once you practice it, which a lot of English schooling emulated with uniforms+surnames v’s casual+nicknames.
I have never really known Americans do this, and it’s why Americans sometimes come across as a bit one dimensional to English speaking Europeans. It’s also why Brits win 10x more Oscars and Grammys per capita.
Then social media came along and violated all your character boundaries and exposed you the creator to your audience, this has since confused younger Brits somewhat as they feel overly “seen”, they have reacted by being more conformist as that’s in their immediate interests, but maybe not their long term interests.
There are times in life when it is empowering to become Ziggy, and other times when it’s better to be Bowie. David Robert Jones (real name) had this figured because he live near a lot of theatre and he’s a smart kid who was schooled accordingly.
Finally, you can heavily normalise playing some characters and you can accidentally become some characters full time, it’s good to occasionally kill them off or violate their norms to break out of negative habits and move your life to a better place.
Full Bowie interview below…