Eddie Marsan Quotes

There's no great mystery to acting. It's a very simple thing to do but you have to work hard at it. It's about asking questions and using your imagination.

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

A large part of acting is just pretending. You get to work with these other great make-believers, all making believe as hard as they can.

Your primary tools, as an actor, are observation and imagination. You can pretty much get everything you need from that, and you do. It brings back that element of pretend.

An actor should be able to create the universe in the palm of his hand.

Writing and directing might be a red herring, and really I'm just re-examining what it is to act, to do it well and do it properly.

As much as I know people love the method and what you can draw out of yourself, a lot of acting is very imaginative.

I'm an actor. I love to create.

As an actor, the only thing you have is your instinct and your imagination.

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 think acting is a work of imagination.

Sometimes I think of movie acting as advanced pretend.

I'm an actor's director. I love it when talented actors can bring characters to life.

Every time you get on a stage or in front of a camera, the whole exercise is about imagination. You're constantly depicting something that doesn't exist, and trying to find the reality of it. Once you settle on that premise, everything else is a matter of degrees.

You know, working as an actor, I'm always working within my own imagination.

On some level, acting is the art of pretend, and you have to have a highly cultivated sense of imagination. You have to be able to see things that aren't there, no matter what aspect of acting, whether it's green screen, whether it's on stage, whether it's anything else, whether you're working on the radio.

For me, acting is play. It's just play and it's playing make believe really, really well.

How do I act so well? What I do is I pretend to be the person I'm portraying in the film or play.

I think chemistry and great acting go hand-in-hand.

For me, it's just acting. It's pretending. The best actors are children, and children don't do research. You never see a child going, 'I'm wondering about my motivation here. How can I do this toy? How can I do this train? I don't feel train.'

I would go into a place that was quiet and isolated and think about how my character would feel in the situation, considering who he was and what he had been through. I would think about that even up to 30 minutes. And when I felt the character was in my body and I had left, I could walk onto set or into rehearsal.

I know what I love about acting - and it's the creative process.

I love actors, both my parents were actors, and the work with actors is the most enjoyable part of making a film. It's important that they feel protected and are confident they won't be betrayed. When you create that atmosphere of trust, it's in the bag - the actors will do everything to satisfy you.

I live in the energy and rhythm of the character. To some degree, that's true of every actor I've worked with.

I guess just a lively imagination is the best effort an actor can have.