Denis Leary Quotes

The trick to being a good actor is getting so involved in your character that the camera disappears, the 50 bored guys eating doughnuts disappear, friends disappear. To get to that point when you don't have to think about it, you're just acting and reacting in those circumstances.

The best advice my dad ever gave me is that acting is believing. Acting is not acting. It isn't putting on a face and dancing around in a mask. It's believing that you are that character and playing him as if it were a normal day in the life of that character.

With films, you completely immerse yourself in a character, get into who they are, live it and then release it.

I've tried to shut myself off as much as possible from the hype of 'War Horse,' and just thought, 'OK, I'm going to focus on the character and focus on the story and focus on what I have to do.'

You're always trying to find common ground with whatever you do, but you want to not be thinking about yourself when you're performing a play. The job is getting yourself out of the way and letting the character go about the scenes.

Once you click into a character, to a certain degree, you can do a lot else. You can do other stuff, then come back and click right into the character. It's sort of funny that way, the way the mind works. Once it's there, it's sort of there. For the stage, for example, all through the day, you're not onstage. You're living your life, la-la-la, then the lights go down, then boom! All of a sudden, you're in this thing. There's a kind of reflex muscle trigger that happens, and all of a sudden you're back into the role. It's just getting there in the first place that's tricky.

To me, acting is a matter of absolute concentration. You can laugh and giggle with your friends up to the minute the director says, "Action!" Then you snap your mind into shape and into the character that you're playing and relate to the people that you're acting with and forget everybody else that you've been joking with.

Actually I have to say when I'm acting, I try not to think about directing at all.

What I do is I come in the morning and get involved in the character, but I'm always very pleased to leave it at night and have my life.

I've just never been the kind of actor that things have stayed with. I've never needed to carry a character off stage.

The process of acting is no different [playing human or ape]. You're embodying the character. You're creating the psychology and the physicality. You're living the moment.

A lot of actors are just like la la la - they're never really connected and then they're in the scene and then boom. They're looking you in the eyes and they're just really focused.

As an actor, you deal in fantasy, imagination, and concentration. Those are your three weapons. Those are your bullets.

It's always hard but the reality is, especially in my case, that every time I go to work I have to do it so it's become part of the job. It's an extra challenge but it's also quite often another extra tool that you have to really think consciously about getting into the character. So while it does require more work, it's maybe even an advantage to a degree because it forces you to switch, to consciously have to jump into and out of the character.

When you come onto the set, everything should be focused around your character and you should stay in the pocket, as much as possible. Every actor has their own process. For me, I really need to stay in the pocket.

I don't have to sympathize or empathize with a human being in order to be able to portray them. I mean, some of the greatest roles that actors have been able to play haven't been the most endearing on screen.

I needed to stay in the character.

When I work, I really try to get absorbed in the character. Unless I want to do something playful with the camera, I'm not too worried about where the camera is or positions.

As an actor, there was that freedom of not having to worry about lights or marks or other people. It was just going out there and having fun with the character.

I surprised myself, that I was in the tissue of the character enough, that I could actually come up with something that I didn't actually feel or didn't believe.

I'd always wanted to do a film than TV show because film is always where my heart has been. I like diving into the character for a few months, and then leaving it behind. I love the idea of that.

My first day on set [Bad Santa 2] was with Billy [Bob Tornton] and it was a sex scene in a Christmas tree lot and you know in order to make it great for the audience you just have to go for it! It was our sort of our icebreaker. There is something very freeing and fun about just playing make believe and it's just over the top and hilarious so you just go for it.

To me acting and doing movies is really strongly about the present time. It's all about when you do it. It's to create this feeling of extreme awareness and concentration. Because it doesn't happen without an extreme concentration, when you are completely immersed and focused on that.

Nothing comes easy when I'm in character, because everything I do in character, I take seriously.

When I'm acting, I'm in the director's hands. I'm very happy to be. I like to be focused on what I'm doing.