Pedro Almodovar Quotes

I was amazed by the kind of preparation Hollywood actors do for their roles.

I've done films where we don't rehearse, and I've done films where we heavily rehearse. I like rehearsals.

I never practice before, I never work hours on a script. I just choose my characters and trust them, and after that, it's about the director taking your hand.

I think acting really helps as a director. It's just no question, because you totally understand the acting process.

I mean, a lot of time rehearsals are taken up with other things other than preparing a character.

Stage acting is for me the basic form of acting. If you make films all the time, you have so few possibilities to rehearse. And it's important to rehearse, because it gives you the possibility to try things which are not good!

Sometimes you do complete run-throughs of scenes, sometimes you break scenes down into little bits. It just depends on what the actors like to do. It's almost like jamming.

If a scene is three pages long, quite often people break it up and do a page, say 'cut' then move on to the next bit, they do it in cuts. I don't really like doing that; I like to go through it all in one organic run, then give notes afterward. A little bit more like theater.

Preparation is really important for actors; they need to know who they are, where they're from, and the experiences up to the point that we make the film.

I like to prepare for my roles well, so you can call me a method actor to an extent.

It helps me as an actor to always be on top of my stuff.

An actor will use every piece of information at their disposal, or a good actor will.

For any role, I pretty much always go to the script, first and foremost.

I personally take cues directly from the script, then I like to surprise the other actors. But you must maintain control on a level and see how far you can go up, down or out emotionally. You have to balance the craft with spontaneity.

I'm the sort of actor who likes to talk about what we're going to do.

I usually don't say anything to the actors. It works better for me because when they come to the set, they are at the same time scared and excited because they are not well aware of what will happen.

I think that different actors go about their preparation differently, but when it comes to acting, I use my imagination.

With acting, you wanna see if you can get into trouble without knowing how you're gonna get out of it. It's like the exact opposite of war, where you need an exit strategy. When you're acting, you should get all the way into trouble with no exit strategy, and have the cameras rolling.

I guess I'm probably a Method actor; I don't know... I just think of it as staying in the zone.

I'm not the kind of actor that would know what my character had for breakfast last Tuesday.

The thing I noticed about Jack was when we did a reading of the script, just to warm up.

What's interesting about the process of acting is how often you don't know what you're doing.

When I shoot, I try to feel the body and the face and the weight of the actor, because the character until that moment is only in the pages of the script. And very often, I pull from the life of my actors. I'm always curious about what these characters and these actors are hiding about their lives.

All the things you can do to prepare for a role that free you, in the moment, are great. You have this muscle memory for things. You don't have to act it as much, once you've done it enough.

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.