Kaui Hart Hemmings Quotes

If you can walk into a set and feel the reality of it, then immediately you're not having to work to bring yourself into the character.

I put a lot of time and energy and thought behind what I do and the characters that I create, and I don't want to do anything peripheral that is going to make an audience see me up there on the screen rather than who I'm playing.

When I was working on 'Men of Honor' with Robert De Niro, there's a pipe that he has in the movie, and it took us about six weeks to find the right pipe for him to use and feel comfortable with. It was a great choice, because it was really about what worked with the camera at that time.

The best advice my dad ever gave me is that acting is believing. Acting is not acting. It isn't putting on a face and dancing around in a mask. It's believing that you are that character and playing him as if it were a normal day in the life of that character.

Every time I create a character, I don't assume they speak like I do, even if they're Australian.

A performer needs to feel the part to be the part!

I think that you have to find a piece of yourself in every role you play. If you don't believe what you're doing, you cannot expect anyone else to believe it.

I find that when I play reality-based characters, it is only as fun for me if I have a lot of time to do research. If I don't it just isn't exciting but if I do, it can be fun because I can learn about that person and the world that they live in and I can become somebody else.

I am not an enormous believer in research being the be-all and end-all. I get suspicious when I read about actors spending six months in a clinic, say, in order to play someone who is sick.

I can't just say the words, do a lot of one-liners. I love each person I play; I have to be that person. I have to do him true.

My job is to focus on bringing characters to life in an honest and personal way.

Acting is not acting. It isn't putting on a face and dancing around in a mask. It's believing that you are that character and playing him as if it were a normal day in the life of that character.

Accents can be a great tool to tell a story - but if you do it wrong, it pulls you right out of the movie.

One of the first things I do when I step onto a set is I scan the set and try to take in every detail, because what I'm trying to find are tools that I can use to incorporate myself into the space and tools that I can use to make the performance authentic and to build on the authenticity of that.

My effort is to slip into any role that is offered to me. The minute you go into those costumes, those grand sets, and start prepping up for the role, you become the part or at least start feeling the part.

I work really hard on every character and do everything in order to make it look authentic.

That, for me, actually is the most important thing about doing a period film is trying to make these people as lovable as they are back then.

I dread to be compared to all these directors who have a lot of spontaneous emoting and swearing in their films - that is death; it's a cul-de-sac. It doesn't lift the material at all. It's just a cliched reproduction of what we think is normal behaviour.

When you're portraying someone, whether they're real or fictional, you have to find some kind of hook where it feels real to you because if you don't believe it yourself, then no one else is going to believe it.

I always like to give and present my actors in a different look.

What a character wears and how it affects their mood and their movements has always been very important to me. A character's clothes, if they're truthful, can make audiences feel something.

I'm a Midwestern girl, born and bred. It's harder for some of us to write about things closer to home. It's not so much a fear of telling the truth but wanting to do it justice.

There are lots of theories that the simpler a comic character is drawn the more relatable they become. People can imprint themselves onto the gaps in the picture. The skill of cartooning is often working out how much can be stripped away.

I enjoy films like 'American Beauty' and want to do similar films that reflect our culture.

Characters work really well when they're reflective of the times that they're operating in.