Greta Gerwig Quotes

I often talk with other actors about that time when you've just finished a job, because I think you do take on the characteristics of some of the characters you play. Sometimes it can be a great thing and sometimes it's a bit haunting because you're not quite sure how to leave it on set. My dad talks about it as being 'de-personalised.'

Any time you make a movie where you're living in a certain head space for an extended period of time, it's tough not to take a little piece home with you.

Even when you think you can detach yourself from the characters, you don't. Because you're spending so much time trying to realize this person and make them real that they do infect you, in a way. And you do take them home and live with them, even if you think you're turning the character off. But in order to pull off a role convincingly, you wind up thinking about that person all the time, and it does sort of creep into you. And then there are things that you'll respond to, or react to in a very different way than you would normally.

I try to do my best to differentiate each fella, each spirit, from the next one... and once it's exorcised it doesn't just go away. It becomes a part of you. So every role becomes a part of you.

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'm very kinesthetic, and when you're that way, you just feel it in your body. I know that other actors think with the logical part of their brain, but I wear my character inside my body, even when I'm away from the set.

There's a lot of romanticisation of the intuitive actor and method acting and all kinds of notions about getting inside a character and coming out from there.

The only way I can be there and really get into the character is if I'm her.

Any time you play a character for a long period of time, regardless of how close it is to you, it infiltrates your life. It's impossible for it not to.

You always take a little bit back with you at the end of the day. I always put a little bit of myself into the characters, too. You find parallels, points of connection, things like that. But I'm not an actor who gets so incredibly haunted by my characters that I can't come back.

I have to believe in the character to perform it.

I'd never played a character as long as I played Poussey. Spending time with her, so much time embodying that character, it was so - and still is and always will be - so special to me and a part of who I am.

Emotionally, I think you're going on a journey with the character, so you have to be present for each and every scene, and for me, one thing I like to do is step away between takes, away from everyone else, listen to some music, and just get into that place to help me perform.

Whatever headspace you need to live in for your character is sort of where you stay in between scenes.

In every movie, there's always some physical thing that triggers the character for me. In 'The Long Walk Home,' it was the girdle. Every time I'd put that girdle on, I'd feel my character wiggle to life.

I'm affected by the characters I play, and sometimes they're hard to live with.

When I finished 'Cocktail,' it took me a very long time to get out of Veronica's mindspace, behaviour, and zone. I had to reconnect with who I am. It is a similar story with 'Bajirao Mastani.' Some films demand that.

Whatever I'm working on, the character I'm playing tends to slowly bleed into my own real life. Not in any kind of creepy, Method actor-y kind of way - it's just an innate kind of merging.

Some parts stay with me for weeks afterward. It's these people that I play. They get under my skin, and I just can't let go of them. I have immersed myself into their lives and into their beings so much that they feel like a part of me.

Before the film begins shooting, in your head, you need to be the character. You have to convince yourself somehow.

I think some actors are very smart and have the tools. They know how to disconnect themselves from the characters, but I think for a lot of them, it's very difficult.

It took me a while to get over 'Highway'. I started living the character of 'Veera' very closely. I don't think I would be able to give so much to a character the way I did with her.

Playing a TV character for seven years is almost like when you do a play. You live, breathe, and everything else with that character 24-7 for six months or four months or whatever, and that gets very deep in your blood. When you do a TV character for seven years, that's a long time. It becomes a seminal era in your life.

The psych up comes from knowing what I can both give and get from each role. I get a lot personally from each character I play that I am able to carry over into my everyday life.

On the very last day of shooting [of The Last King of Scotlang], I remember wanting to get the [Idi Amin] character out of me right away, as much as I could. You literally take a bath to wash him off you. Luckily, I went into another part not so long afterwards, so I was kind of able to push it away a little bit. But speech patterns, and little sounds, particularly colloquial things, like the way you ask questions or might respond, were sticking with me, probably because I'd worked so hard to make it a part of my everyday way of expressing myself.