Jennifer Beals Quotes

Doing a film, or being sent scripts to look at a certain character, it's very odd for me. I tend to take it very personally.

In theater, there's a lot of work to do to build the characters. It's a great experience.

I take a script and mull over it and underline the bits I want to emphasize. When I go to the set, I know exactly what I want to do.

For me and my films, I want my audience to experience cinema in its full glory. It's not just visual, it's audio as well. It's emotional, and I want you to be engaged with not just the scene but with the characters.

Working with actors is something I've never done before. I find it tremendous. It's hard work.

I always think that the deal, once I do the script, sort of the experience I go through writing, which is everything you can imagine, but I always think it's the one thing I can do when I'm directing is say is that it's all about the actors, that I can say, 'We're all here to serve the actors.'

Inside of all the makeup and the character and makeup, it's you, and I think that's what the audience is really interested in... you, how you're going to cope with the situation, the obstacles, the troubles that the writer put in front of you.

When I write a song, I tap into the emotion and the feeling and then I use the emotion to write the words. It's the opposite when I act. I use the words and tap into the emotion.

Mostly I work really unconsciously, and I think if the scenes are really well written, which they are, and if I just throw myself into it, I don't really think about it.

One of the exciting and enjoyable aspects of acting is being in the environment with another actor.

Acting is about animality. It's great to be allowed to be animal. But I feel more alive as a director. Every morning, I have to write.

I love acting it's apart of me and I try to put a little bit of myself in each of my roles.

I love acting. It's an interesting challenge to make something that doesn't exist appear like it's happening, and to do it in a real way.

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 like doing a lot of research, and then you get there, you're in wardrobe, and then you're just reacting to what the other person is doing. The other actor is reacting to what you're doing, and it's this great back and forth. Because you've done all this research, you can use some of it or throw a lot of it out. You can get lost in it.

'The Last Of Us,' to me, is just amazing storytelling, because everything's from the character point of view, which even movies don't really do successfully a lot of the time.

Acting is not a mystery. There's nothing that I know that other actors don't know. We all act, we're all actors, we all know the same thing. The only thing that separates us is experience.

As an actor, you know when you've got great material in front of you. When you're working, you think, 'Is this the one? The one that everyone will respond to and be moved by?' You pray that you have told the story well... that your peers will see it and audiences will love it.

It's a hard thing to do, to be given a script, and know that you've got to turn up on the first day of the shoot - generally without having had any rehearsal - and present a character. It's really baffling; it's incredibly hard to know how to begin, to approach it, other than just thinking about it.

Acting is an imaginative exercise. It would be odd if you didn't try to identify with the roles you play, but I think I can differentiate between where my imagination is leading me and where I actually am.

As an actor, you don't really have a say or a voice in what the conversation of the show is going to be. So, as an actor, I'm just trying to make sense of why the character is making these choices, and somehow, in that way, you can sympathize or root, at least not detest, what this person is doing. That's, at least, my job in telling that story.

Any actor worth his salt is looking for truth, the core of truth of the particular situation he is portraying, of that play. The playwright, the actors and the audience, that's what we're all there seeking. When it's working, time is destroyed. Sometimes 'Moon,' a play of four hours, would go by in a snap of the fingers.

The only thing that I can contribute as director is to work with the performers in a way that brings out the drama.

I don't know acting, but I choose good stories and portray emotions according to the story.

I think the two main tools actors have are the imagination of what other people have gone through, to connect with and through research, and there's one's own experience.