Keira Knightley Quotes

As always, with acting, you can't be too self-conscious. You shouldn't care about what people are thinking about you at the time because they're not caring about you, they're caring about the character.

There's something to be said about sitting in front of the TV and being removed from your own life and just pushed into another one.

In my work, I want to convince people that I'm that character. If they know everything about Lesley Manville - private life, all of that stuff - it doesn't help. So the kind of anonymity I enjoy is key.

There's people who watch shows while they're preparing their dinners, and they don't want to focus, and they don't want to be challenged, and whatever. And then there's people who want to really sit down and get into a character in a world, and feel like they're expanding, or they have complex relationships, or whatever.

Movies absorb our attention more completely, I think.

Television, as you know, can kind of jettison you into a whole new world.

When I play a gay character, I want to be as believable as possible. And when I'm playing a straight character, I also want to be as believable as possible. So the less that people know about my personal life, the more believable I can be as a character.

When they say 'action,' I am into it completely and forget everything around. When they say 'cut,' I am back to myself.

I always tried to make people laugh. I attribute that to - I come from a family of divorce. It was a way to distract myself from stuff. I always thought it was interesting that my brother and I existed in this really tight bond, and we would just take the piss out of pretty much everything. I knew I wanted to be an actor so it would be great if I could make people laugh while I was doing this, because I could be other characters and other people, and I could hide behind things. It was a great out for me, and a mode of expression.

TV is a big business. In some ways, it's surpassed films, in terms of the way people invest in these shows and invest in these characters, and give up so much of their time to follow these people's stories.

There is never a personal-life connection between my characters and myself. I'm a professional and I can access what I need to access, so there's no bleed-over. I didn't need to believe in aliens to play Mulder. As for my personal life, everything is fantastic right now.

I became an actor so I can show you characters and never have to show you me.

Brian is an archetypal character, a bit like Don Juan, which is how I play him. He's a blast to play. He believes unapologetically in his freedom. He holds nothing back. Something I'm learning is, you can't hate the character you play. If I think my character is an asshole, that's all that will come across. He is drawn in an extreme way, but that doesn't mean he's not a person.

I know when I watch a film at this point, if I completely lose myself in the characters and the story and the world of the film I know that it's at least in my opinion, that was great. Otherwise I'm thinking: "Oh I know they were just doing A, B and C, right before they walked into the scene, then the camera was there, then they probably took the shot from this reverse close-up and moved it into this." When all of that drops away then I'm like: "Okay this was phenomenal, this was fantastic." I mean, any film or TV performance in general is probably good.

The power of movies lies in the fact that it enables the viewer to enter the reality, to some extent, of the characters.

I love anything that kind of removes me from myself and employs something else. So, I love accents and I love pretending.

There are actors I know personally, or I've heard them say, "The less known about me, the better, because I just want people to think of me as the character." I think Matt Damon said that recently. He has a point and I think I get that.

I can't help moving my face - reacting - when I watch a movie, because I'm really inhabiting a character. I know this is weird, but it demonstrates what I love about cinema: it allows you to live a different life, to have a different experience, to disappear for two hours. I think it's wonderful.

I never like to go out of character when filming starts. I fear that if I do, I might not be able to pick it up again.

I like playing characters that, you know, a couple could go see the movie and one person could love him and one person could hate him.

Onstage, you just have to tell the absolute truth about the character you are playing. You hope you communicate it, and you hope it comes back like a tennis ball. If you're listening to the sound of your own voice, nobody else is. The audience knows, and they freeze on you.

People don't stop me on the street and throw things at me. But I'm aware of what that dynamic is, so whenever people react strongly to a character and say that they hate me, I take it as a job well done. And for most people, there's a sense of removal. Most people are not saying, "Oh, my god, I hate you!" Most people that have reactions say, "I love to hate your character."

I can spend a lot of time on the internet as a substitute for TV. This is part of the reason why I'm not a good girlfriend - you can't sit down with me and watch a movie. I hate being strapped down to stay with something.

Successfully (whatever that may mean) or unsuccessfully, we all overact the part of our favorite character in fiction.

The story of my life has been of public interest, which is why I've been so passionate about having a private identity. When I step into a character, people have to be able to suspend their disbelief; they have to be able to divorce me from Hermiona. And not having everyone know every single intimate detail of my entire life is part of me trying to protect my ability to do my job well.