Jill Clayburgh Quotes

I think back story can help guide your choices, but when you're playing a scene, you're not making choices; you're just intuitive.

It's a funny thing. You sort of never figure it out with acting. You're always learning.

Mostly I work really unconsciously, and I think if the scenes are really well written, which they are, and if I just throw myself into it, I don't really think about it.

I don't chart out the life histories of the people I play. If I did, I'd be in trouble. I work with my heart and my head, and naturally emotions follow.

I don't know if I do anything to get into character: I just go with my gut.

I'm not really one of those people who goes and writes some big back story and agonizes over characters. I think you kind of can get it. For me personally, it's just kind of more instinctive. But I don't have kind of an acting background. I fell into it accidentally.

I don't have a process; I just feel it. My book on acting would be very short.

I think I'm a very intuitive actress.

I work with my instincts. I don't have a process that I learned in an acting class whereby I break a script down or whereby I do a certain kind of research.

I think it's a falsehood to think you can have some kind of plan. Acting isn't like that, it's more vocational, I think.

Some people say, 'Do you have any theories on acting?' And I say, well maybe: I think you can start with zero and end with zero. You don't have to go anywhere, you don't have to go for the result.

I tried to copy some of his mannerisms at first but it didn't work. And then I just let the spirit of the character grow in me and it just took its rightful place. I started to speak the lines and it felt right.

I had no real experience studying acting; I came to it having done other things for a living for many, many years, and I have this gigantic respect for experience and technique.

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

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

I spent lunchtime in a grave during the filming of 'Bloody Mama.' When you're younger, you feel that's what you need to do to help you stay in character. When you get older, you become more confident and less intense about it - and you can achieve the same effect.

As an actor, you're lucky if you get a month before a project starts. There are times when you get a day before a project starts. So to be able to really sit and inhabit that mind and the story is really beneficial, and it really helps for me to be able to then compartmentalize as we're shooting and detach and go somewhere else.

When you start out on a project as an actor, you know, you approach the character from the standpoint of maybe writing a list - even if it's a mental list that you make - of the adjectives that the character has or that character possesses.

Part of the fun of acting is the research, finding out about other people.

There are two schools of thought: There are those actors who explain to you that they know exactly how they're going to do the part... And then there is the other method, which is to have no method at all. This is mine.

For actors, you've gotta sometimes fill in your backstory.

I think there are actors who are like, 'Okay, what am I doing, how am I doing it, what's the appeal? Tell me what to do, what are the exact lines from the script? Okay, I got it.' I am not that way. I would be a terrible bus driver. I'd want to be like, 'Oh, let's take this side road! Let's see what happens when we go down this back alley.'

I wouldn't say I'm a method actor. I do research when I feel I don't have enough experience for the part I'm playing.

I used to joke I was a point-and-click actor. My whole process has been about trusting your instincts and hitting your mark.

Most actors spend a lot of time training themselves to be an actor. And I kind of didn't do that. I just started doin' it in front of an audience and had to deliver.