Jimmy Smits Quotes

What happens with every role, you have to trick yourself, you have to creatively find ways to explore the mental state of your character.

I have a journal, and every character that I play, I write as the character: how I feel about things and how I'm going to play it.

I don't normally think of a specific actor. I concentrate on the character, and then when we get into pre-production, that's how names come up.

I'm interested in the intersection of character and actor.

As an actor, you think you know your craft, you know the conflicts in your character, but often you don't.

I think my concerns are the same as every actor. Can I find this character and make it come to life properly?

I've always had a process that I do before I even get to set or go to the location. I work privately, and it almost feels like therapy between me and who I'm playing. So I have this inner life that's there and it gives me a confidence, too, that when I'm playing the role I know every question.

I didn't have to audition. That's common, but it had never happened to me before. Normally, I hate auditioning. I need to stew and think... let the character develop and grow inside me.

As an actor, you're lucky if you get a month before a project starts. There are times when you get a day before a project starts. So to be able to really sit and inhabit that mind and the story is really beneficial, and it really helps for me to be able to then compartmentalize as we're shooting and detach and go somewhere else.

I do not use any set methods, not even The Method. The character after all is in the lines.

When you're acting in a scene, you're focused on doing the scene. You can't break character and go, 'Oh my God, I love what you're doing!'

What I mostly do is take the script, analyse the hell out of it, see what's in there, see what kind of person I'm dealing with, and then forget I'm playing a father and just play a person who exemplifies all those things.

You know, I've never been much of a method actor. I feel like, with every project I go in extremely prepared and I like to have a good time.

I definitely think it exercises an interesting muscle, auditioning for bad parts and trying to figure out how to make it real. I don't know what I'm talking about now.

My mentor Jon Simmons introduced me to the Stanislavski system, which is so heavy on back-story. So you write and write and write these back stories about a character and then you throw it away. So then on set, if it doesn't come, then you didn't do your work.

I don't really prepare for each role the same way.

Actors make choices for different reasons.

It's kind of up to the actor to deconstruct the scene and deconstruct the character and figure out how to make it real. That's what I love about this job: It's sort of a puzzle each time, and figuring that out is sort the key, whether I'm playing a cop or a killer.

With any actor, if you know your character well enough, you'll know pretty much what he would say under any circumstance, or whatever situation might rear its head.

Music is a very big part of my preparation as an actor.

People think memorizing lines is hard, when that's the last thing you worry about. You get that done, and then you've got to worry about the internal stuff, which is the challenging part.

Well, I've always been a character actor, you know, and you always get your share of character actors who are bad guys. So it never surprises me. And if it's good writing, you can find your way into the part well enough.

Oh my goodness me, Daniel Day-Lewis - huge, huge fan of his. I've always loved his philosophy on acting: he always talks about returning to a state of play.

In every film, whether it's a fictional character or not, you create an idea of the character and for me I always do a bad impersonation to start with.

All actors bring something unexpected to the role because they have to translate what's on the page and make a real character out of the black-and-white text that's there in the script.