Joan Chen Quotes

Actors love mental disorders, dialects, and corsets. Give them one of the three and they're happy.

Being an actor myself I realize that all actors believe they are qualified to play any role. If you showed me a script with a black woman character I would tell you that I could do it. That is what we do. We act as if we are someone else.

I remember playing the Mad Hatter in a school play and feeling very comfortable in the character.

To be unrecognizable in movies is the biggest compliment that anybody can give you.

A lot of film stars are just playing themselves in different frocks.

Wardrobe is - in films, I could say it's a good half of the acting. You get the right rags on, they'll talk for you.

Larry Drake - I love his work... He plays a very disabled character like the role I'm playing.

I can play a doctor, and I can play a thug.

I'm frequently surprised, sometimes bugged off, and sometimes happy, depending on the actor. It's a fact of life that just as often as not an actor can breathe life into a line as he can destroy it by misinterpretation, and I've been blessed frequently by having good actors.

If you have the right costumes you feel more confident as the character, they really help you act.

There's no such thing as a small part. There are just small actors.

My strategy to show caricature idea of American youth culture, which I think worked after talking about it for so many years, is that I had only a few things. I wanted to buy my own wardrobe for Rock 'N' Roll High School, which of course they said "Yes" to, because their clothing budget was $200, and I ended up spending my whole salary - which I think was about $2,100 - on my clothes. And also, any time I was onscreen, I wanted to have as much energy as I possibly could. I think it just really worked for the character.

I just love the whole art form of acting, of being in front of a camera and playing different things. Not that I would ever say I'm the greatest actor in the world, but I am capable of playing different kinds of roles that emotionally I could get into.

My first experiences with fashion were dressing up. It was always about fantasy for me. Dressing up as characters . . . I always thought that's what clothes were - that they would make you into the person you wanted to be. I'm an actress, so I love to act, and I think that's one of the most important things - the thing that makes you feel like another person.

It's a bit of an outside-in approach - so often the clothing can reveal so much about a character. It's like part of her superhero costume that she gets to put on and become someone else.

The camera can move, you can make the shots, blah blah blah, but as long as the actors are good, you have something.

The actors I looked up to when I was a teenager, they all just disappeared into different characters.

Costume is always an asset. Normal costume you have a lot to say about - if you're wearing suits or ties, and what color you want, and how it's going to be cut, and stuff like that, and whether or not you're going to wear a hat, and blah, blah, blah. But, when you're wearing a special costume, and of course, costume is probably the second ingredient in character, script being first, I always find that the costume does a lot to cement your character, to put it firmly in mind.

You do a movie, depending on the character, there's some degree of makeup involved, especially when you're playing a vampire and you're all white and kind of dead. Sleeves, regarding costumes, there are generally sleeves, which I appreciate. I think we all do.

It's exotic for me to be given a script that's already written, and be given a pay cheque, and asked to dress up and play, and that's all.

We play different people - our art form is performance art - so unless you're playing the same type of person, I don't know if you could improve or make it worse.

You really get a feeling, when you're reading scripts, pretty quickly. Within 20 or 25 pages, you can get a sense of the part. I always think about whether I'm right for it and whether I can do it. If I don't think I'm right for it, it should go to somebody else.

I've always thought that when anyone receives an award for acting they should always thank their fellow actors, because the only way you're going to deliver your best performance is when you have other good actors on the set supporting you and being very present for you even when the camera is not on them.

I think when you're playing a character in any film it's so crucial to have the costume that makes you feel like you're going to be that character.

(Guy) Pearce, as the hero, makes the mistake of trying to give a good and realistic performance. (Jeremy) Irons at least knows what kind of movie he's in, and hams it up accordingly.