Divya Dutta Quotes

Over a spell of about three years, I played a series of roles that were, for me, all very different, but most of them came out within a six-month period. They all dealt with a kind of dark territory that in some cases had been mined before in movies.

In my career, there have been three things that were challenging: playing gay; playing a Jewish woman; and playing Chekhov. The scariest part was playing Chekhov!

In films you do a scene, you play around with it and unless you're doing a lot of reshooting, which no one has the luxury to do, you deal with the problem for a day and then you move on. On some level, it never allows you to go very deep into what performing is about.

It's a lot more fun for actors to cry and rant and rave, or have a drug problem or a drinking problem.

Not even my excellent training at Juilliard prepared me for my first movie role, where I played a transsexual who falls in love with a military guy in 'Soldier's Girl.'

With movies, it's 10 or 12 or sometimes even 24 weeks, if it's a massive movie, to live within a character. But with a show that's successful, if you start in the first or second season and go until the end, you're always finding new elements of your character that are being added in because you start to live in them as human beings.

In films, I didn't crave the type of attention I had sort of stumbled into in my music career. And I do not audition well. I'm really not good at it. Early on, I did movies like 'Alpha Dog' and 'Black Snake Moan' because the directors didn't ask me to audition.

My first kiss was onscreen. My character learned to drive before I did, so when they asked me to hit the mark with that giant Lincoln, I hit the camera instead. Being an actor gives an interesting perspective on life. And in my case, an interesting preview.

'True Grit' was fun to do, but I wasn't cut out to be an actor. I made John Wayne look so good, he won his only Oscar.

I learned a tremendous amount about dialogue because I suffered as an actor.

I've played a lot of mothers in my movies.

I feel my job as an actor is to explore all sides of humanity.

I did Shakespeare in college and the nerves I got doing Shakespeare are the same nerves I get doing 'Mad Men.'

A big fear of working with an actor that's never been a lead in a film before is that you're going to have to work really hard to pull a performance out of her.

I've had some marvelous parts, but I'm also asked to play characters who are kind of superficial people.

It's a whole other way of working when you work in films: You know exactly the arc of your character.

In 2005, I had the great honor of playing Shailene Woodley's mother in 'Felicity: An American Girl Adventure.' I was immediately impressed by her work ethic, both on and off set.

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.

In my fantasies, I always wanted to play the ingenue, but in reality, in my bones, I am so used to playing the grandmother that I don't feel safe or even sure that I can do it.

As an actor, you are in a unique position because you're not only memorizing dialogue but really embodying it. You naturally feel the rhythm of good writing.

You know, I've never been much of a method actor. I feel like, with every project I go in extremely prepared and I like to have a good time.

I think if you work as an actress and are supposed as a character to be in love with some actor, then to some extent you do have to be in love with him.

It was my first straight dramatic role, and the most adult, intelligent one I have ever played.

Coming from theater, and having been to acting school, and done little, small Australian independent movies, a lot of the time, it's always about character.

Most of my training at graduate school was geared towards drama, so I feel good about it, and I can do it, but it requires a lot more work from me. I feel like with drama... well, with all acting, really, you need to honor the truth of the situation.