Donnie Yen Quotes

The girls in 'Downton Abbey' do what they do so well, which is make it so natural despite the fact that you're living within these constraints and taking so much from the research aspect of it.

Acting coaches in Hollywood were always telling me to use my hands and body more. But that was never me. I just breathe and sometimes it doesn't look as if I'm doing that.

There are times when I consciously give the character something physical - a walk, the way he sits, how he talks, or his lack of physicality, which is like a physicality.

The costume affects your posture, affects your walk, how you hold yourself, and how you breathe. The costumes make you deliver.

I like acting with no lines because all of a sudden you're able to express things without always worrying about the text. It's great to have a great text, but there's a lot of stuff you can't say in words, and I think there's something really nice about good physical moments.

I'd like to play with a period piece. Playing a girl next door in 2010 is so different from playing one in 1950, the way you talk, walk, dress, relationships. It's really fun studying all that.

Suffice it to say, every actor works differently. Laurence Olivier would put on his costume and when the wardrobe was right, he was in character. That sounds superficial, but it's true, and look at the results.

Acting is very physical, even when it doesn't appear to be. It's about the arc of your body's language through a film.

I used to want to be in 'Downton' because I had never been in a period drama, but then I did 'The Suspicions of Mr Whicher' and had to wear one of those frocks and... I didn't feel very comfortable.

I feel like when you perform in a period drama, it's so easy to transform yourself into someone else because the costumes are so different.

I use my hands a lot while acting.

I'd always wanted to do costume drama, but period dramas often become very wooden. Just because they're born in the 1400s, all of a sudden people start losing their sense of humour or their personalities.

The joy of a period film is that you're taken to another world. The costumes determine the way you move, and then consequently the way you breathe. And then, the way you breathe effects the way you think.

With public speaking, practicing congruence is very helpful - allowing the words to be expressed with the face and body. It helps to think of simply "turning up the nonverbal volume."

I like playing the social convention. If you're in a period drama, there's always something dancing underneath the surface as a human - but then you always have to conform to the social conventions around you, and those two things get to be juxtaposed against each other. You're being human, but you're trapped within the social convention of the time.

What concerns me is that man, unable to articulate, to express himself adequately, reverts to action. Since the vocabulary of action is limited, as it were, to his body, he is bound to act violently, extending his vocabulary with a weapon where there should have been an adjective.

I think I am good in the department of body language and fighting, and stuff like that. It's just natural to me, maybe because I love sports.

Every man's own character is written so all who will may read it, in the expression of his eyes, the tone of his voice, the posture of his body, the style of his clothes, and the nature of his deeds!

My acting style and my physicality lends itself to doing things like putting a scene together for a dancing competition.

I'm quite a physical person and I gesticulate a lot, which can be a problem when you're in Hollywood and they do everything in a minimalist way.

Let me hear your body talk.

You have to realise that touching is a real violation of personal space.

Behold the hands, how they promise, conjure, appeal, menace, pray, supplicate, refuse, beckon, interrogate, admire, confess, cringe, instruct, command, mock and what not besides, with a variation and multiplication of variation which makes the tongue envious.

In stand up, you get an awareness of how you come across, but in acting there is almost a hyper-awareness on how you might be physically perceived.

I do use my body a lot, to click into a character.