Sophie Okonedo Quotes

The play is on top of me all the time, and I am constantly thinking about it. Even when I leave the theatre, I'll mumble the lines to myself or think about the way the character walks or holds himself.

If I'm doing a scene that requires a lot of focus, I'll just take myself away and do what I have to do.

Usually I'm pretty myopic. It's hard for me to multi-task, so to speak. If I'm in a show and I'm creating a character, I'm just completely into that. It's really hard for me to do anything else like write music. I have to sort of shut down different sides of my head and just focus.

Whenever I am acting, it's everything, you know. If I'm researching a role, I'm completely consumed in that and, between action and cut, I live in this suspended time.

I think everybody's got different methods of working which suit the particular individual. Mine is to sort of play the part, and give 100%, to concentrate and focus on it while I'm actually working, but then leave it behind until the next day.

I think about baseball when I wake up in the morning. I think about it all day and I dream about it at night. The only time I don't think about it is when I'm playing it.

I give everything I have to give on the screen. I feel I don't owe the public anything else.

When you're acting, it should be the most important thing that's going on. But when you're not, leave it alone.

It can be very thrilling being able to witness Viola Davis do her thing for hours and hours, but there are also no windows, and you're just in a room for fourteen hours trying to keep it together.

My kind of work is very intense. The trouble with me is that I completely fling myself into it. I get giddy. I get terrible crushes on jobs.

I will do whatever I can to become the character. I have no right to distract the audience from the mood of the film.

When I am on a set and I am working, I am almost near-obsessive about it. I love the process.

It's amazing to completely focus on something for four, five or six months, have it completely consume your life and be constantly thinking about somebody else's set of circumstances and how they would react to something. I find it fascinating. It's rewarding and on a professional and personal level.

As always, with acting, you can't be too self-conscious. You shouldn't care about what people are thinking about you at the time because they're not caring about you, they're caring about the character.

When I am rehearsing for a play, I try to read nothing that might distract my concentration from the work in progress.

I took my play very seriously, and I got way, way lost in my play world.

Any rehearsal process - I find, anyway - does have quite an effect on me, and I very much live in that world for the whole period of time that I'm involved with the production. But normally, afterwards with a little bit of space, I can come right back out of it again.

When I attack a role, be it TV, film or stage, the first thing I say is, I don't want to know anything. If it's good I don't want to hear it; if it's bad I don't want to hear it. The only thing either thing can do is distract me. I like to stay focused.

Coming from a background of being onstage, you're onstage for two and a half hours and you're in it for the whole time no matter what you're doing. Even if you don't have a line, you have to stay in it.

I actually think acting is a form of self-hypnosis. You have to be hyper, hyper aware of what's going on around you. You have to know where the lens is, what the shot is, and where you're moving. And then you have to trick yourself into an emotional state where you believe this stuff is actually happening.

Acting isn't a side thing - you have to live and breathe it.

I'm on fire when I'm singing, I'm completely in character, I use my sense memories, and every syllable of it is meant. It's a very special thing.

A mind which really lays hold of a subject is not easily detached from it.

Debra Winger doesn't let anything interfere with her performance, which is the way it should be.

I am a person who feels compelled and then gets immersed.