Forest Whitaker Quotes

I've heard of actors like De Niro and Streep who stay in character all day long. And Daniel Day-Lewis did it for 'My Left Foot.' I don't do that myself.

I certainly don' think I could've played the character [Idi Amin] the same way without being in Uganda. I loved working in Uganda.

I'm not an actor who approaches films doing a lot of research. I do zero research, unless it's a film where I'm playing a mock version of someone who already existed. Then, you've got to do a lot of research.

Impressionists have to paint with a very broad stroke because you've got to see it within a couple of seconds. You go, "That's a really funny Robert De Niro." As an actor, though, you look at different aspects of a character. I try to completely surround myself with the assignment. It's like being in a big cloud and then some of it rains through.

Emma Watson was saying the other day that when Helena Bonham Carter was becoming Hermione, or trying to become her for the polyjuice-potion sequence, she was trying to take on Emma's mannerisms, and she was asking Emma questions like, "What's Hermione's favorite color?" Because she wanted to absorb all this information and to know, in here touches temple what she was like. And as I've tried to develop as an actor, I see that these things, however much they seem insignificant... By knowing what's Neville's Longbottom favorite Beatles song, you can know so much!

As an actress, you get to basically be your character.

When I do a film, the days before or the night before, I throw up. Sometimes it's just in my mouth and I swallow it back, but sometimes it's real. Whatever it is, it's hard. I don't do the first five or ten minutes of my character's appearance in a movie until the middle of the shooting schedule because I don't want him to be defined by my nervousness. So, we do the middle of the picture first.

When you come onto the set, everything should be focused around your character and you should stay in the pocket, as much as possible. Every actor has their own process. For me, I really need to stay in the pocket.

When becoming a character, you have to steal. Steal whatever you see. You can even steal from other actors' characterizations; but if you do, only steal from the best.

As an actor, I function from a place of compassion and empathy - you have to believe 100 percent what your character is doing, because otherwise it will look like it's not real.

I know there are a lot of people who like to get very involved in their characters, but I, personally, find it too involved. I just like to do it as a job - and it's my job to make it look real.

When you're playing a character, you don't really want to have an opinion about where you're going to end up. Otherwise, you can't really stay in the moment and in your character.

You have to stay in character in between takes.

I'm quite good at switching off and sometimes I forget who I am in a character.

My fun as an actor and my task as an actor is to transform myself to become other people. I enjoy becoming characters but I don't enjoy becoming caricatures. The research I do is only necessary in so far as we move into other dimensions.

Acting, it's the disappearance of self, disappearance of your own needs and your own wants and the kind of embracing of the character that makes it work.

The actor must know that since he, himself, is the instrument, he must play on it to serve the character with the same effortless dexterity with which the violinist makes music on his. Just because he doesn't look like a violin is no reason to assume his techniques should be thought of as less difficult.

I don't think a lot of people really understand the commitment it takes to being a character that an actor in Hollywood would take to approaching a role that they're doing.

Now I like to think that I'm in my character's head so much that I don't have to substitute. I'm in the moment; I'm living in the moment. And if it's genuine, it's real, and if it comes out it comes out.

I would love to be in the position where the role is challenging enough that I need three months to prepare for it and then six months to live the life of character.

There are some actors that want you to call them by their character's name and they have no relationship with you outside of the character. But I like to get to know who I'm working with so that we can relax together, and it's more fun.

It's fun to play a character when you can't concern yourself with how sympathetic they are.

The trick to being a good actor is getting so involved in your character that the camera disappears, the 50 bored guys eating doughnuts disappear, friends disappear. To get to that point when you don't have to think about it, you're just acting and reacting in those circumstances.

Actually I want to scare away method actors because it's a pain. It's like, 'Come on, what are you doing? It's not real. What are you doing? Oh, you're really brooding. Okay, good. Go to your trailer. I'll see you in an hour.'

The interesting thing with acting, actually, is that you get to be so many different people that you get to do so much research on so many different things that I've learned so much about brain surgery and about astrophysicist-type of things and traveling to amazing parts of the world.