John Hillcoat Quotes

If you can just actually let the character be for a bit, then you get the right sense.

Actors have to make you believe that it's happening for the first time and all that jazz and make it human and at the same time entertain you.

When you are portraying somebody that has a very specific emotional weight, you feel like you're really starting to abandon your own body and go to someplace else.

I guess every actor has certain emotions they can access easier than others.

I wanted to get the opportunity to do what actresses do: play the inside of a person.

We're in the business of using real emotions to bring pretend emotions to life.

Sometimes you read things that people don't even notice in a performance, that you just are moved by or understand that this actor is really living his or her life on the screen. The first time I realized that was when I watched Brando in 'On the Waterfront.'

Good acting comes from finding the essence of a character.

As an actor, you try to bring as much of yourself to a part to try and create a feeling of authenticity and emotional truth and resonance.

That's what acting is. You're pretending to be someone else.

When you drop your guard in films, the acting process compensates. You get lazy and you start acting.

I've given every maid I've portrayed soul and heart.

Movie acting is primarily listening. If you're really engaged, that's all a movie audience wants to see is you processing what's happening in your world.

I work primarily for the camera-it's not something I really talk about a lot, but it's part of the way I am as a movie actor. The camera is my girl, as it were.

You really have to take your time; you have to know your character and your scene. The line you are about to say comes from the moment right before. It's not what's said, it's what is in between the spaces, it's what's in between the lines; that is the most important to play.

Character acting is a much braver pursuit than a guy who runs around and intermittently clenches his jaw muscles.

My job as an actor is to cover and expose in varying allowance that - so that the audience can peek through the window to the people I create.

When you watch it, you're like, Wow. I look like that. But it doesn't feel like that at all. It was about communicating with Gale Harold and getting across what I wanted to say about the character.

I like actors who, when you see them on screen, you sense a person, not just an actor.

Of all the stars whom I worked with, I think Steve knew better what worked for him on the screen than any other. He had such a sense of what he could register, and that helped a lot in terms of shaping the character and the script.

I love playing complex characters.

Your job as an actor is to piece together whatever you've learned in your training, or whatever you have experienced in your life, to piece together a person.

I think I'm sort of method in a sense, and I enjoy, you know, trying to find that reality in fake emotion.

I just don't play a character for the heck of it. Rather, I always look for a human element in every character that I play.

That's the mark of a really great actor, when he can make you feel the emotion without having to search for it.