Berenice Bejo Quotes

I know from teaching that actors want to act. Even the subtlest actors can do a little too much.

I'd love to tell actors about all the things they don't need to worry about. Less is more. If you have it inside, you don't need to show too much. People pick up on things.

Part of my aspiration as a film actor is to bring subtlety to everything I do - honesty but subtlety.

I play a lot of characters where I don't even speak in my own voice. I learned about focus and I learned to trust that things can work when they're not heightened and that it's interesting when things are pared down.

For me really good acting is about subtext.

With young people, it's how brassy and flashy can you be. But you get a bit older, it's about how restrained can you be. You have to feel it all, think it all, but you don't have to play it - it's just gotta be there, and if the story's good and the script's good, people will see it.

Too many actors try to get too much out of scenes that they ought to be leaving alone, just doing them quickly and getting the hell out.

Showing fear is like having comedic timing because I think actors have a tendency to go way over the top with it, and that sort of loses steam for what's going on. The audience sees right through that and laughs at you, so it is something that I'm aware of.

There were a couple times with close-ups where I tended to overact. I would use more of my face than I needed to. I learned how to be more subtle.

'English Vinglish' is simple; that's why people like it. The film has simplicity and sensitivity. There is no melodrama. Some things have been conveyed just through expressions and no lines.

I've never been one of those to kind of like, 'I want somebody to do something against their nature to titillate me.' That never holds any interest. And I always want people to be who they are and if they're being not who they are I feel like it's false and, therefore, less easy to connect to. I don't need them to kiss or to display physical intimacy. I think that almost becomes too obvious. I love playing in the suggestive.

I think a lot of people become actors because they have a great reservoir and repertoire of many different emotions they felt over their lives. It's like having a toolbox, and you go down into the toolbox and choose one or two of those that you need for a particular scenario, or something that comes up in a line.

I found that with Rooney, her instincts in films was always to underplay and to sort of reduce down what was necessary to bring you in - a sense of economy, a sense of scale, which just seemed to understand the medium so well. When you see that in a younger actor, I always think it speaks to incredible knowledge. I can't exactly figure out where that comes from, that confidence to know how to be quiet.

With realistic and deglamourised roles and live sound, the charisma of a star is not enough. Can you be many different people?

I was not wary of playing a mother on screen but wasn't sure if I could do justice to it. Would I be able to showcase that kind of overpowering love without being a 'real' mother?

I think an actor without life experiences is empty.

There are different kinds of actors, and movie actors tend to be exceedingly precise and mechanical in a way that's really admirable for me to watch. You always learn from them.

[On being asked, 'Did you ever say that an actress needs to be able to laugh and to cry and that when you need to laugh you think of your sex life and when you need to cry you think of your sex life?':] No.

I have the confidence that I can take anybody and have them give a good performance, because I don't think there's anything to acting except expressing, being able to converse. So if I can just convince somebody not to clean themselves up, and not to be someone that they're not, and just be what they are in given circumstances, that's all that acting is to me, and I don't think it's very difficult.

I can tell when an actor's forcing tears, and it's tricky because you then have to film it and edit in a certain way to skirt around the issue.

As an actor, I think most people have a tendency to want to demonstrate that they can act, they can emote.

I think people pick up on that. You use personal stuff and mix it all in - I definitely pull on that stuff in my acting.

As an actor the best thing you have is your imagination. You're not going to have all the experiences, but you draw on the things that you know. So I think you definitely use the things that you're familiar with to your advantage.

Think of anger as a muscle. The way you express anger isn't the way that I do, or you. If you have a good director, you will find that he's getting you to use an entirely different muscle that you never even knew you had - it's real hard and sore, then after a while it becomes normal. And you discover all these new muscles when you enter a new character - that's what a director does for you.

I'd prefer not to act in the film I'm directing. I think, though, as an actor, you do learn how to turn things on and off quickly and kind of compartmentalize. You learn to accommodate the camera and the other actors, to notice where the boom is and where you mark is, and be able to repeat something a few times.