Jeremy Strong found his New Yorker profile to be a "pretty profound betrayal of trust".
The 43-year-old actor discussed the lengths he goes to with his intense approach to his job in an interview last year and he admitted he felt "foolish" when the piece sparked scrutiny around the world.
Asked how he felt about it, he told Vanity Fair magazine: "What do I say about it? It was something that, for me, felt like a pretty profound betrayal of trust.
"And maybe ultimately said more about the person writing it and their perspective, which is a valid perspective, than it did about who I feel I am and what I’m about.
"The noise and the fog after it: I think it’s something that, I guess, what I care about ultimately is trying to feel as free as possible as an actor. Part of that is trying to insulate yourself from all of that, and what people might say about you or think about you.
"You have to free yourself from that. It was painful. I felt foolish.
"As an actor, one of the most vital secret weapons that you can have is the ability to tolerate feeling foolish."
The 'Succession' star doesn't think he can talk about his work without sounding "self-serious" so he tries to just focus on his job and ignores the "vapour and mist".
He said: "Any day you walk onto a set, if you’re not in a place where you’re not risking that and you’re not wagering enough, I’m always feeling like I might be making a big, giant f****** fool of myself—with James’s film, with the show. That’s part of the price of admission to doing good work, which involves risk and which involves getting yourself out there. I guess I’d say that it’s all fine.
" Acting is something that’s hard to talk about without sounding self-serious, but it is something that I feel very seriously about and care about and have devoted my life to.
"At the end of the day, it’s quite simple. You do all this stuff so that you can work as unconsciously as possible. When you’re working on the frontier of your unconscious, I think good work is possible.
"There’s really not much you can say about that because it’s your unconscious. All that stuff, I have to treat it as vapour and mist. It’s not really relevant to the work."
