The film adaptation of Hedwig and the Angry Inch has such a cult following. What’s been your most memorable interaction with a fan?
It’s interesting, Hedwig wasn’t famous, it was a film that so many people found because a friend told them about it. So people don’t come up to you because you’re famous, it’s because they were touched. The most intense interaction was when I was on the subway platform and a kid gave me a tiny piece of paper and hopped on a train. I opened it and it said, “Thank you. Hedwig saved my life”. I don’t know what happened – maybe they felt lonely and then the film made them feel like “There’s other people for me out there”.
You recently starred in Oh, Mary! on Broadway – doing eight shows a week – what was your post-show wind-down ritual?
I’ve become a late-era pot head – just a night-time pothead – and there was a great comfort in coming home, after a long night making people laugh, to a nice bliss. Then I’d settle down with an episode of The Wire. I watched it all over again for the first time since it came out – and it’s still great.
You’re bringing your Bowie song cycle, I’m Afraid of Americans, to Australia. What’s your favourite Bowie song, and why?
I keep coming back to Heroes: it’s so unique and rousing, and so complex. It’s not just heroic – he’s like, “I’ll drink all the time”, it’s dark. It’s inspired by him watching his producer, Tony Visconti, have an affair and kiss a woman under the Berlin Wall – that’s where the lyrics came from. It’s his most moving song.
In terms of song cycles, I would say Ziggy Stardust. One career regret that I cannot live down is that Bowie asked me to consider Ziggy Stardust for the stage, and I said no. I’d just finished a decade of Hedwig, which is a rock star on stage, and I couldn’t take it any more. But later, I’m like, “Why didn’t I just fucking do it? It’s David Bowie.”
You’re also bringing your punk masterclass to Australia. Who is a contemporary punk icon that inspires you?
The entire population of Minneapolis who fought back [against ICE raids]. That’s neo-punk: standing up to the so-called system for the right reason. Punk is not a hairstyle you saw on TikTok, it’s a way of making things that has the same goals as leftist identity politics – harmony, empathy, justice – but the tactics are wildly different. These days our sensitivities, especially for young people – it’s like, “I don’t want to see that. I’m triggered”. But punk is about facing the ugliness to get through it. The ugliness isn’t the point – the original punks, like Sex Pistols and Patti Smith, were trying to get through the dark into something else.
What’s one punk thing we can all do right now?
Turn off your phone. I think letting go of digital technology opens you up to your natural punk, to your natural self, whereas when we’re mediated by this thing all the time it changes your attention span. When your attention span shrinks, you feel less empathy, and you get numbed out. How do you get back to your real self? Through punk, through music, through art – in my view. It was art that helped me. You’ll feel better when you keep the phone as a tool to get to the IRL, not to be the IRL. And the more we get into fucking AI, you’re not going to want to trust [your phone] anyway, so why not get off it now? It’s punk to turn off your phone; you’re walking away from the herd.
What’s been your most cringe-worthy encounter with a celebrity?
I worked with Nicole Kidman on a couple of films, and we had a good working relationship, but it wasn’t like a cuddly “let’s hang out” relationship. And I don’t know if that’s her way; she seems socially a little bit nervous, you know? I think she’s happier on a horse, on her farm. Anyway we were in her apartment in the West Village, and I had a CD recording for a certain scene I wanted her to hear – this is in the old days – and she didn’t know where the CD player was. It was a white room, and we couldn’t find the stereo, it was just a blank wall. Nicole and I were like, “Let’s hunt for it”. And we were trying to trip the trigger that would open the stereo – our hands were all over the wall.
Were you stoned?
No, I wish I was! It was almost like a performance piece. Eventually she touched something and the CD player flipped out, and I played the song, and she’s like, “I like it” and then I was off. Another one: I voiced a character in a 90s commercial for Dunkaroos, an Australian-themed cookie that you dip in frosting. I was Sydney the kangaroo, with a terrible Australian accent. So I said to Nicole, “Hey, how do you do your Dunkaroos?” in the accent, and she’s like, “No.” That was cringe.
What’s the strangest job you’ve ever had?
Around the late 80s, I was a ticket cashier at a film festival where I was acting in three films that were in it, but had to pay the bills. My favourite job before acting was janitor for the military thrift shop in Albuquerque, New Mexico, because I could just take anything I wanted. And there were a lot of gay books – it was the 70s, so even the military had The Joy Of Gay Sex. So I kind of learned about being gay from being a janitor and reading these books.
What’s the most chaotic thing that’s happened on stage?
Well, I did fall off the stage in Oh, Mary! I was being a good boy and picking up someone’s prop in the dark, which made me rush and then fall off the stage in the dark into the audience. The lights came up, and I was climbing back on, and the audience applauded like, “Oh Mary, the drunk!” Everyone [in the show] was horrified. I actually had a hairline fracture from that, but I went back two days later, because for me, the show must go on. I always get injured in shows. In Hedwig, my knee went out.
If you had to fight a famous person, who would it be and how would you fight them?
Right now, I’d say Pete Hegseth. I’d fight him with giant plastic hands – not to hurt him, just to slap him until he’s silly. There’s this sort of male peacocking that he does, that he somehow connects to Jesus, and how Jesus wants “lethality-maxxing” or whatever Clavicular language he’s using. He’s an avatar of the manosphere, he’s not real – he’s just a collection of ticks of the worst of the worst of American manhood. And his deep lack of empathy seems to be a plus in the Elon Musk world. You know, I actually heard a Christian preacher talking about “the sin of empathy” recently. This is America, we can change Christianity into whatever we want. It is fucked up, and it’s repulsive. Having a British mother, and having lived in Britain and around the world, I don’t feel as American as I used to.
I used to love the idea of America as a refuge: come on over; make your life here; we don’t care where you’re from. I love that. I grew up in the military, and that’s the vibe in the US military. No one cares where you’re from. Theatre is the same way, and New Orleans, where I live, is the same type of thing. They don’t care where you’re from; it’s like, “What you got to bring to the party?”
John Cameron Mitchell is appearing at Melbourne international film festival for a 25th anniversary screening of Hedwig and the Angry Inch on 21 August, and at the Festival of Dangerous Ideas at Sydney’s Carriageworks on 22 to 23 August. I’m Afraid of Americans: A Bowie Song Cycle is on at Sydney’s Enmore Theatre on 6 September and Melbourne’s Recital Centre on 9 September
