Sarah Baker Quotes

You're trying to bring an emotional and psychological reality to a character that's on the page and make them three-dimensional.

Part of my strength as an actor comes from what I've learned all these years: when you play a villain, you try to get the light touches; when you play a hero, you try to get in some of the warts.

I try to steal from the best. Suck it all in. 'Taxi Driver' is really a bible for film actors, a master class. A lot of emotional power, a lot of emotional depth but it's contained and you just see the tip of the iceberg.

The beauty of performance for me is finding details with which to betray character.

Sometimes when you're playing a very intense character, a disturbed character, you find other layers. That's much more interesting to me, rather than just playing 'intense.' I find it too boring.

I've always done method acting. I'm a method actor, and I've done that for years. I never did acting and decided to take it seriously because all the parts people want me to do were playing the pretty role. If I want to play someone pretty, I'll play myself.

As an actor, you work to the script: that's our main priority. But you have to be aware and look around for things that help you bring that little bit extra, that touch of realism that rams the point home.

When a character has so many secrets and so much inner life, it's a joy to play those characters because you can use your craft.

Sometimes you read things that people don't even notice in a performance, that you just are moved by or understand that this actor is really living his or her life on the screen. The first time I realized that was when I watched Brando in 'On the Waterfront.'

In 'Yours Truly,' I was the centre of the story; I was the protagonist. There was a lot more happening inside the mind of the character which was not projected loudly through dialogue and action... As a performer, playing such a nuanced, internal character is challenging.

I am trained in theatre, and so I take time to study and get into the skin of a character.

The only pressure, as an actor, is to step into Eric Carter's shoes and make him as fully and as complex and as flawed and as human as I could.

You don't want to have a character say what's bothering him; you want to define characters by action.

I never do roles, I play people.

For a time, I really thought acting was just impersonating. But impersonation is just big brush strokes, really. What makes acting different is empathy.

As an actor, I'm constantly striving to find the darkness in the lighter characters and the lightness in the darker characters.

If you write interesting roles, you get interesting people to play them. If you write roles that are full of nuance and contradiction and have interesting dialog, actors are drawn to that.

Good acting comes from finding the essence of a character.

Claude Rains was what we call an actor's actor. He was very involved with himself and his performance.

I had to focus and create a character in Bagger Vance, not just do my 'Will Smith' thing and get paid.

The luxury of television is that you get more than one shot at who you think the guy is that you're playing.

Good actors, you always know what they're thinking. That's why they're good actors.

Yeah, I think the common denominator - and this is probably going to sound like Acting 101 - but the common denominator is belief in the character in the moment.

I spend a lot of my time trying to draw the attention of actors to the minute and subtle details of human behavior, which was the sort of thing I was looking at when I was a neurologist.

I have just gained a deeper and deeper respect for acting and the whole art of it because you're really trying to live a life and to do the best justification for it.