Julie Benz Quotes

I love being challenged physically, as an actress.

It's always challenging to go into a role.

I think there's something to be said for being physical in acting.

For me and for I'm sure any actor, each role is a different challenge to prepare for in a different way.

That's what acting is about - for me, at least - tackling different personas and characters.

I wouldn't be able to tackle a character like Rosalee on 'Underground' without having tackled the many characters I've played before.

My character in 'Hollyoaks' went through absolutely everything! There's not one emotion where I'm going to go, 'I don't know how to play this.'

I don't prepare myself for any character unless it is really different.

As an actor, it's really exciting and challenging to play a character which is much older than your actual age.

I have fun doing lighter roles, as I don't have to do anything against my emotions.

I've been in front of the camera a million times as a musician, and even directed a few music videos. So, I know a lot about spacing, focus, blocking, etcetera. So, acting isn't totally new for me. Still, I find it fascinating, because you actually get to be another person.

I'm always keen to use my body in my work, so I'm looking forward to the motion capture for Smaug. Both Gollum and King Kong were primates, whereas I'm playing a serpent, so it'll be interesting - I'll have to tie my legs together, possibly, or else they'll be kind of splayed out to the side as a reptile's should be.

Filming is physically and emotionally hard, especially acting in something like this, where we go into the honest feelings of these people. But it's also very exciting because there's an adrenaline that's pumping (through you) when you're doing these scenes.

You don't go - oh this is a motion capture role, I'm going to employ this method of acting. We don't have anything to hide behind when we're doing this.

Sexa as a character was fun to play. My mother couldn't even recognise me in the get-up of an older guy. In fact, it surprised me also. It's easily one of the most special characters I have ever played.

I can play younger. It's better to be playing younger because you've got that experience, and it's hard to play older when you're younger.

In my experience of doing physical scenes, half of your energy is spent on trying to get the other actor to enter into it physically with you. Most actors don't want to hurt each other.

Theater gave me the confidence to believe I could play something else, 'cause it was so difficult. It was me out of my comfort zone. It gave me the confidence to believe that I could push myself and challenge myself and still succeed. Yeah. I'm very, very glad I did it. And I'm very keen, now, to take what I learned there into more television and film.

As an actor, you're just taking temperature. I am anyway, all the time, and responding appropriately. I was again cast very last-minute for Rushmore and met Wes Anderson, this quite physically and socially awkward man who didn't really talk to me much, a precocious and intelligent young boy. And Bill Murray. And we were sort of left in this bizarre hotel together and taken to strange locations around Houston. That was quite an isolating experience.

I think dancing is contributed hugely to how I am as an actor, just a level of comfort in my body and in movement. Things can become strangely physically technical when you're acting, and often something that just feels so unnatural is actually what you need to do in a certain scene.

I've done so many other projects where you're in a room with a reader and you're acting your lines out: 'We have to get out of here! Any minute the building will explode!' And then the reader says: "Yes...we have to get... out of here." So it's not easy to be in the moment in that kind of situation. Reading with the entire cast in the room for The Clone Wars makes the experience much more organic and I love that.

I get some acting jobs. I like it other than the constant slipping in and out of character.

For me, I have having the time of my life playing this character [Louis Litt]. At times, it's unbelievably challenging and scary, when it comes to certain vulnerable areas that I don't necessarily want to go.

It certainly helps, I think, with some actors to understand the process of acting. You see what extraordinary pressure they're under, there's a huge circus dedicated to a particular moment and they're got to deliver and it can help that you, even if empathetically alone, understand what they're doing.

I'm naturally shy but I've done this [movie Salomaybe] so much and you get better at it than you would think.