Natalie Portman Quotes

I've dealt with a few method actors, and I don't know if should say this, but I think it's a bunch of nonsense. I think it's film acting and you just have to be on when the camera is rolling.

When I was a younger actor, I was very immersed in it, very "method" and all that. Now, I don't give a hoot.

I'm not a method actor. I can't even explain so much what I do.

I was a serious method actor until I visited this site.

At drama school I learned the Stanislavski technique, which uses sentimental memories and bits of your past to put real emotion into the scene.

I still do a form of sense memory. It honestly depends on the job. It depends on the other people you're working with, how the other actor works. It's take a little from here, take a little from there.

When you're acting, everything is there around you, you just have to believe that it's real. When you're standing there with a slightly grey wig on and you have a baby in your arms screaming in your ear, you can go: "Well, I guess this is what it's like!"

I hate the word "method acting." It's just so silly. You hear people going, "Yeah I'm a method actor." I'm like, "So what happens if you're playing a period film or something? You're in the Second World War. And what happens when your mom calls you on your phone? Do you go, 'Oh! What is this strange talking brick device?'" No. It's stupid. But you do everything you can to get in that mindset.

Method acting has had a major influence both in writing through the eyes of other people, and seeing through the eyes of other people, trying to address different ideas in a way that would go beyond preaching to the choir.

I'm not a method actress.

I remember in one of my early films I had a drunk scene. It was Kiss Me Goodbye, with Sally Field, and I was playing this kind of nerdy guy who gets drunk and dances. And so I thought, "Oh well, I'll just get drunk and do the dance." And it was wonderful, but then I had the rest of the day, and the next day. So I learned that you don't really have to do the things that your character is doing. But us actors, we use something called sense memory. I've certainly been drunk before, and part of my job is to recall that without getting drunk.

I think an actor can actually gather moments, memories and emotions for his next character. So, it's a constant work.

I love acting. I just love it. It's in my bones. I remember when I was a kid, I watched an interview with Dennis Hopper talking about Jimmy Dean on the set of Rebel Without A Cause. Jimmy said to him, "If you've got to cry in a scene, you've got to cry. Make it real." And that's all that I believe in.

Emma Watson was saying the other day that when Helena Bonham Carter was becoming Hermione, or trying to become her for the polyjuice-potion sequence, she was trying to take on Emma's mannerisms, and she was asking Emma questions like, "What's Hermione's favorite color?" Because she wanted to absorb all this information and to know, in here touches temple what she was like. And as I've tried to develop as an actor, I see that these things, however much they seem insignificant... By knowing what's Neville's Longbottom favorite Beatles song, you can know so much!

Sometimes you can just step into the character, and you get all your feelings and emotions just from sympathizing with her and being her. But then, other times, you just have to resort back to anything that you've been through in your own life and try to play that.

I'm a big believer in sort of sense memory, like using something that you've experienced in order to put yourself in the position that the character is in.

I took Meisner for a long time. I use a lot of sense memory and, well, I wouldn't say Method, but I can't really avoid getting into character.

Bette Davis had a phrase that called it "cigarette smoking acting" .

Great acting is all about being in the moment, being in the present tense.

The actors make the film. They're the ones that take this theoretical movie that's in your head and make it real. The success of a film is entirely on their shoulders. I admire them, because acting is such a difficult thing to do, and I personally can't understand it.

The actor is merely a crude empiricist, a practitioner guided by vague instinct.

You don't really have to do the things that your character is doing. But us actors, we use something called sense memory. I've certainly been drunk before, and part of my job is to recall that without getting drunk.

Method actors are absolutely terrible. They want to direct themselves, and it's a disaster.

An actor definitely has to be in the past a well as the present; an actor must react to past experiences every minute, every second.

With the films I've done, I've written on them, I've acted in some of them. And even ones I haven't acted in, I've acted them out just to be sure another actor can do them.