Joanna Going Quotes

I actually love doing period pieces, purely because it takes you into a different world, mentally. The clothes you have to wear are so far from our everyday clothes that it immediately helps with the character and putting you in that mind frame.

It was really fun to play a period piece because I've never done that before and it's completely different.

I do fat people and these makeups are really hard to do, but I want to make monster movies.

I love the simple poetry of theater, where you can stand in a spotlight on a stage and wrap a coat around you, and say, 'It was 1860 and it was winter...'

It's interesting - an actor's research is different to just historian's research. I'm looking for things that I can actually physically use in the movie.

When you do a movie, you go to the location and get into your costume. It's part of your metamorphosis into your character, and it just made sense to do it.

That was the fun of acting, being a blank canvas you could transform into the character - Indian princess, 20s vamp, Mother Courage, Oxford don, 94-year-old wife.

I just love doing costume dramas; I am very lucky, as I see myself as a part-time time traveller.

You have to pretend to live in those clothes that they lived in, to live within the climate that they had then. You have to imagine with the help, obviously, of all the other technicians that are around - the writer, the director, the other actors.

I'd like to play with a period piece. Playing a girl next door in 2010 is so different from playing one in 1950, the way you talk, walk, dress, relationships. It's really fun studying all that.

An actress in a film starts every day with an hour and a half in front of a mirror, with hair and make-up and costumes.

A period piece is a great opportunity for an actress. I love acting because I love to pretend, and when you're doing a period piece, then even the time you're in is pretend, so there's that much more to play with.

You don't really have to dress a ton of actors. You don't really have to spend a bunch of money lining up extras to look the time period.

I think it always helps when you build a character, and then, you actually step into that character's wardrobe, something else happens. Another angle of the character comes to life.

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

I feel like when you perform in a period drama, it's so easy to transform yourself into someone else because the costumes are so different.

Thugs Of Hindostan' involved a lot of prep to be able to make the character look effortless.

There's a very old tradition of theater actors doing their own makeup. It's like putting on your mask. There's an element of storytelling involved in it - you put on your character when you put on your makeup. At least, that's how I like to look at it.

'The Great Fire' is more what I'm used to - being in costume and make-up for a long time, trying to be 'period appropriate.'

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

I'd like to have a different look for every film. As an actor, I think I should put more emphasis on my performance than on my looks.

I love a period drama - the theatricality of going into work and having that distance between yourself and the character you're playing.

You know in acting you have those moments in a movie where a character yells or breaks down crying and you're like, wow, that's acting?

For me, the audition is always the hardest part of the whole process. Once you get on set, once you're in costume, you're with the director, it's so much easier to get in the headspace.

When a role involves physical transformation, it helps build the character better.