Billy Magnussen Quotes

Acting is not just impersonating your character.

Acting is different from mental gymnastics. You try to discover as much about the character as you can, but a large area is mysterious.

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

Sometimes I think of movie acting as advanced pretend.

I had to focus and create a character in Bagger Vance, not just do my 'Will Smith' thing and get paid.

Of course you can find something exciting and dynamic in any character you want to portray.

Everything, I think, about acting is based on imagination.

I don't really prepare for each role the same way.

Movie acting is about covering the machinery. Stage acting is about exposing the machinery. In cinema, you should think the actor is playing himself, if he's that good. It looks very easy. It should. But it's not, I assure you.

With a film, I do my best to understand the author's intentions and try to bring the characters to life.

I'm an actor and my job is to interpret.

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.

Obviously an actor draws on his own experience.

All actors bring something unexpected to the role because they have to translate what's on the page and make a real character out of the black-and-white text that's there in the script.

Acting is many things. Acting is playing lines, of course, but it's much more profound than that. Acting is truth-telling and trying to find the truth in a human situation, which will be sketched out by a screenwriter with all the skill that a screenwriter can do; but in the end, that's just the map of the journey.

I wanted to get the opportunity to do what actresses do: play the inside of a person.

We are actors. We can adapt to any different look for the sake of the story and the character.

It was very difficult acting. I feel it is a very tough job to portray someone else's character and to behave like that on screen.

I am trained in theatre, and so I take time to study and get into the skin of a character.

I love acting and really taking on another person, another life.

As a filmmaker I find it much more rewarding to work with actors who are classically trained. It's about the work and only the work.

It's your job as an actor to fill out the blanks. I love doing that. To fill in the bones.

I think of myself as an actor. The duty of an actor is to be able to impersonate anything - a child, an old man, a tree, a chair, a woman.

An actor matures with experiences, and the more the emotions he/she has been through, the greater the intensity of performances.

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.