Colin Firth Quotes

I really do think that if you're doing your job right, you're never gonna be what the other actor was, but you can be influenced by his intelligence and his choices.

An actor only has his own understanding and experience to work with.

Sometimes I'll read things in the script and think, "That's not how humans behave," or "I don't understand how to do that role and make it seem like I'm not some kind of strange alien or on a sitcom." I don't get it, and when I feel that way, I have to listen to my instinct. My initial instinct does lead me in a direction that I can trust.

The best actors are always the ones who've directed as well, as they understand all the problems you face.

It's funny because I've resisted acting as a career for most of my life. But both my parents told me if I ever want to direct, I should act first because no director should direct until they know what it's like to be in the actor's shoes.

I know what actors fear, what they like; I know how to get things out of them and I listen to them better, since I've been there.

I can't do a role or character unless I have lived that character. For me, the best teacher is life.

When I audition, I understand what it takes and the insecurities that come with it. If I do anything, I put actors at ease. I used to tell directors who weren't actors, the best thing they could do was take an acting class for a couple of months. Just to understand.

The closer a part is to you, the harder it is to play. Anything else is just imitation. If I'm playing a Russian countess, I get the hat, the accent, the outrageousness. Easy. Playing a murderess? Perfect.

Just to get the basic fundamentals and empathy - I think that's the most important thing to bring to it if you've acted in the past and are now a director: the empathy.

For a time, I really thought acting was just impersonating. But impersonation is just big brush strokes, really. What makes acting different is empathy.

[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 played a father a few times. You don't have to shoot heroin to play a heroin addict ... I'm not running for president but I could play a candidate. Most of the time, you don't really have to have those things in your life to understand what they're like.

I'll never approach a part in the same way again. Piaf taught me so much. In terms of my work, I think I'll enjoy it even more than before, because now I know that characters truly exist in their own right. I'll have a way to bring them even more intensely to life.

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.

To be an actor or actress, you have to feel on a deep level and tap into emotions that you've never felt before. You're imagining how something would feel. You have to use your imagination so much.

When I do a character, I try to base it on someone I have met or an experience I've had.

I don't use any techniques; I'm not trained to be an actor. I just enjoy working in films.

I'm the kind of person who if I was playing the role of someone who got shot, I'd probably want to get shot so I knew what it felt like.

Acting is a question of absorbing other people's personalities and adding some of your own experience.

It's not good just to have life experience of film-making and that's all. It's hard to play a real person when you've been in jets and town cars for three years.

You learn an incredible amount doing theatre, not just about to behave.

To play any character, you have to have a total understanding of why they do what they do.

An actress spends a lifetime observing people. You build up a mental library. No, not a library. Make that a repository.

Every time you play a bad girl or guy in a movie, you really come from a place of pain.