Mahershala Ali Quotes

Music actually inspires me a lot. I listen to a lot of music, and often I find that if I can associate mentally a song or a piece of music with a particular character or scene, it helps me get back into the head of that character.

I've always used music for my acting, and I do have a kind of a very personal play list that I create.

I do not use any set methods, not even The Method. The character after all is in the lines.

I love an acting challenge, and I love getting to sit down with my script and do all my drama work.

My approach to acting is that I am totally intuitive. I read the script and I get it. If I don't get it, I can't do it.

Many times, when a director reads a script and wants somebody who says 'Far out', then they let me do what I want with it and that's usually more interesting for an actor.

People think memorizing lines is hard, when that's the last thing you worry about. You get that done, and then you've got to worry about the internal stuff, which is the challenging part.

It's funny, because what happens to me when I read a script, when something grabs hold of me, I start getting these flashes of people or places or things or images.

I believe that acting in any medium is the same thing, it's discovering the truth in where you are.

I love acting it's apart of me and I try to put a little bit of myself in each of my roles.

I'm one of those lazy actors; I like to take what the playwright wrote and work with that.

Talking to actors is the same as talking to any other artists; it's getting into the moment for them, and making sure they can lose themselves in the performance!

As an actor, you know when you've got great material in front of you. When you're working, you think, 'Is this the one? The one that everyone will respond to and be moved by?' You pray that you have told the story well... that your peers will see it and audiences will love it.

What Tim does is, he calls me and sends me the script. And then he sends me a drawing, an illustration of his image of me as the character. It's so great.

It's a hard thing to do, to be given a script, and know that you've got to turn up on the first day of the shoot - generally without having had any rehearsal - and present a character. It's really baffling; it's incredibly hard to know how to begin, to approach it, other than just thinking about it.

Actors are such wonderful creatures and such wonderful instruments. It's always different on the page or in my head. I hear it differently. I see it differently. And then, you give it to an actor, and it comes alive in a way that you didn't expect.

Before 'The Walking Dead,' a few of the jobs before that were just like, 'Ugh.' I try and make everything as creative as possible, even when I get the script and can't imagine what I'm going to do with it.

When you write a script that you've felt in your soul for a long time, you can't ask the actors to go through the same emotions. You have to do part of the job to make things as easy as possible for them.

I feel that I am pregnant by music, and it is the father and mother of my child.

I always look for the character that gets into your guts and tells you, 'You have to play this.' You have to be brave enough to let everything else go and let the character guide you. When I read a script, I look for that kind of pull.

I'm coming from the notion that acting is an art. It is not a business. It is about building characters, not about selling personalities.

Acting has always been very comfortable for me, so it allows me to pay attention to other parts of the process literally while I'm acting.

Eventually, when I got the 'Meadowland' script, I saw something in it that made me think I could make something special out of it, something that could work with my style. Emotionally, I connected to it. I thought, 'If I feel this way just imagining it, maybe we can make that happen on screen and make people feel something when they watch it.'

Before 'Memphis,' I had never considered working on a musical. But when Joe DiPietro sent me the script, I heard the entire score in my head.

Preparing for roles sounds so academic, doesn't it? It feels as if you are preparing for an examination! In a creative medium, the preparation is of an entirely different kind, and for me, the ideas flow from the script itself.