Matthew Lewis Quotes

I am not one of those actors who dwells on the histrionics and the subtext and future text of the character. I deal with the scenes that I'm doing at that specific time, because if I do that, they play in more of a real way.

Regardless of how dark and heavy the character is the actor has to approach it with that frame of mind.

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

I don't want actors to know anything. The more they are lost, the better they play.

There are a lot of actors who will sit here and talk to you about characters - 'He does this, and she's a really interesting character because she does this.' I'm not like that at all. I'm not an actory actor.

I don't like to intellectualize about my acting. I don't sit around and study the pages of a script over and over again.

I'm a task-oriented actor. A pretender. And I try to invent my process anew each time I make a new project. So I frown on any method.

When you get to set, you don't try to play the plot; you just play the character.

I work with my instincts. I don't have a process that I learned in an acting class whereby I break a script down or whereby I do a certain kind of research.

I learn the techniques and then take what I need. I have the Essie Davis technique of acting. I'm an instinctive actress.

I don't prepare for my characters.

I never do any research for my roles.

I'm not a Method actress. I work in the present, the day-to-day.

I'm not a trained actor. I have neither read acting books nor gone to acting school. But I have certain fundamentals on how I approach a character; the basic skeleton of my preparation is based on observations from real life.

As an actor playing a character, I can't come in with my judgement, or else I can't play it honestly. My judgement has to be reserved for later.

I don't really prepare for roles. I just kind of do them!

I think that different actors go about their preparation differently, but when it comes to acting, I use my imagination.

There are two schools of thought: There are those actors who explain to you that they know exactly how they're going to do the part... And then there is the other method, which is to have no method at all. This is mine.

I'm not a method actor; I hope you know that!

My mentor Jon Simmons introduced me to the Stanislavski system, which is so heavy on back-story. So you write and write and write these back stories about a character and then you throw it away. So then on set, if it doesn't come, then you didn't do your work.

When I get a role, I try to delve as deeply as possible into the character.

I like to try to change things up a bit in the way that actors such as Philip Seymour Hoffman or Michael Fassbender did and do.

I'm not a classically trained actor. I'm not a product of Stavlovski method or anything like that.

I'm not a booky actor, I don't go away and do loads of reading up on a part, generally. I'm more interested in what the people we're portraying do physically, and looking at their sentence construction.

I'm probably one of the worst actors as far as preparation goes, because I actually don't prepare. I find it easier to read the script and whatever hits me in my stomach, like deep down, I just go with it. And the director kind of molds me whether to go right or left with it.