Anna Chlumsky Quotes

You can't sit here and try to predict what kind of character I'm going to be drawn to next. At the time when I read 'The Girl on the Train,' it wasn't like I was, 'Ooh, I want to play a hot mess next.'

You always have to make positive choices as an actor, even when you're playing someone who may not be doing the best things.

I'm attracted to roles that are unpredictable, and if I can get my hands on something like that, I'm thrilled. I like performances where you don't know what's coming, moment to moment.

Being on 'The Following' is constantly flying by the seat of my pants. The story can change and the character can change at a moment's notice.

Things can change on a daily basis in television. You can be introduced to aspects of your character that you had no idea existed because they didn't exist a week before. The next week it might be taken away from you in some way that you can't control.

Whenever you deal with science fiction you are setting up a world of rules. I think you work hard to establish the rules. And you also have to work even harder to maintain those rules, and within that find excitement and unpredictability and all that stuff.

The whole format of 'Game of Thrones' is that you just don't know what to expect.

In TV, you may think your character's one thing for two episodes, and then the third episode it could be something different.

It is hard to be an actor on a TV show, because you don't know what's coming and you sort of find out very last minute sort of what's happening.

I mean one of the weird things about TV and one of the things that some actors don't like but I kind of dig is that you never know where you're headed, I mean you never know what the writer might think of next.

Film acting, if you don't play the lead, you come, and you do your scenes in a few days, and you act with a couple of colleagues. All the rest of the actors you never see, and you don't even meet many of them. And you don't know what will happen with what you've done. Maybe it will be in the film, maybe it will not.

As an actor you make choices that are either right or wrong, and you find the ones that are right for you. As an understudy, the choices have been made, so you have to make those choices right. Going into the role, you can't really question it.

You set up the story, but the characters start talking, and they go places that you didn't expect. You have to follow.

I think it's more interesting to throw people into a story and let them catch up instead of explaining and feeling like you have to slow down for them. I think audiences, for the most part, they don't want to be ahead of you.

Sometimes they keep us in the dark, but it's TV, so sometimes they keep us in the dark because even they don't know yet. You know what I mean? So, it sort of develops as it goes along and according to various needs that arise.

Actors are such wonderful creatures and such wonderful instruments. It's always different on the page or in my head. I hear it differently. I see it differently. And then, you give it to an actor, and it comes alive in a way that you didn't expect.

What I always got excited about with 'Arrested Development' was the element of surprise.

If you're on a TV show, you never know what's going to happen week to week with your character.

I've worked on so many films where the script is one thing and then, somewhere down the line - on set, sometimes - it changes, and there's zero I can do about it.

What I love about 'The Good Wife' is that it's not straightforward.

You never know, especially on episodic television, you just don't know week to week what's going to happen.

Coming from the theater, you know what your given circumstances are every night and who your character is. You're reenacting this one moment of their lives over and over, so you get really good at figuring out how to navigate it. TV was a huge adjustment for me because the script changes every episode, and you have a different set of circumstances.

Episodic TV is notoriously brutal because just when you think 'I've got this, I know this character' you can pick up the script for series four and you die in the first episode - or your character suddenly transitions from a woman to a man.

Ideally, it's great to gain inspiration from the script, but when filming starts, characters and their journeys can change.

The thing about Drew Goddard and Mike Schur is that they are legit geniuses, and they love storytelling. They love creating worlds, love messing with the audience; they love doing things that we don't expect. To get to be a part of that is too good to be true.