Betsy Brandt Quotes

I started out wanting to be an actor and I like to give actors as much as possible. I love writing stuff where they can really lose control.

All good actors are unpredictable, and a little crazy in a good way, because they feel more secure playing other people than themselves.

In all my movies, there's always a kind of heartfelt element, to be able to do a drama and to be able to spend more time in the emotional stuff with no pressure to get back to the funny that's very liberating for me.

A lot of actors are like, 'Why do I do this? My character wouldn't do this? This doesn't make sense.' And in a comedy, you kind of just need to walk into the door.

In movies, you get to explore parts of yourself that in real life, people shy away from, like looking stupid or embarrassing yourself or getting too angry, anything inappropriate. As an actor, you walk into those moments.

There is always a hesitancy with actors, and inhibitions can get into the work, so you have to figure out how to make it feel so loose that you can do anything, and if it is not right, that is okay because we'll do it again.

My character has to be alive. It can't be a mere prop, and it has to have a life of its own. I need to have that space to play around and the scope to interact with the people around me. That freedom would give me a lot of margin to improvise with.

Whenever you have a role where you don't get to know anything about the character, you have to invent it yourself. You have to feel like it came from somewhere.

As an actor, those kinds of really intense, emotionally packed, dark things, those always very appeal to me greatly.

When I was doing 'The Prime Gig' with Vince, we played around so much that the director separated us like children!

That straight man character is a short trip between comedy and drama in a project, so I can play the comedic beat on the same page as a dramatic beat. It gives me a lot of freedom as an actor to play scenes in multiple ways because I don't play the clown, nor do I play someone who is particularly maudlin.

I would probably choose supporting roles if I had to make a choice. It's actually a really hard thing to say. It's all on a role-by-role basis, ultimately. I shouldn't be so quick to say that. I feel like you're given greater license to be colorful and eccentric in supporting roles, and that's interesting to me.

Acting is great therapy - you get to do things you'd normally get arrested for.

It's fun to explore behavior that you can't explore in your own life, so you fool around with it in acting.

In a way, I don't create anything; I just open myself to the character, and the character takes over. Of course, I'm aware of it, and I'm driving it, but I don't try to control it. If I try to control it, it goes wrong.

I love doing the nighttime soap, the emotional, psychological, hard stuff that I got to tackle on 'Hannibal.'

I've spent most of my life trying to make actors comfortable, which I think is 90 percent of getting a good performance.

I love doing comedy. But sometimes, that exists at sort of the mid-level to the high-comedy level of craziness, and I don't necessarily get to plumb the depths of kind of serious acting as often.

Acting gives you freedom to express your thoughts.

You never know the depth of an actor.

I think people need to understand the amount of emotions I can pull off. I want films I'm offered to have these dimensions.

When I work with actors, we try to tune the instrument so that you can feel things and allow those emotions to wash through you. You allow the fear to happen, and then you react and you listen without trying to get too absorbed into the actual end mark that you're supposed to hit.

When I am filming a movie, I think I tend to do what I want with my character.

I like to play non-cardboard characters. I try and bring out the many complex layers in the personality of the characters I play.

When you're acting, you can try your own ideas and be free.