Martin Clunes Quotes

It's your job as an actor to fill out the blanks. I love doing that. To fill in the bones.

Of course you can find something exciting and dynamic in any character you want to portray.

I have just gained a deeper and deeper respect for acting and the whole art of it because you're really trying to live a life and to do the best justification for it.

What's interesting about the process of acting is how often you don't know what you're doing.

That's what I love about acting, is playing different roles. I want to work for the character, and not make it work for me.

With acting, you have to become someone else. That's the fun part of it for me - to step outside of yourself and become a character. I guess being Jimmy Cliff is a little bit of a character, too.

Maybe I'm a glutton for punishment, but I enjoy anything where you get to flex your acting muscles, you get to really go for it.

I sometimes improvise, and that's what I call 'massaging the character.'

I don't really have choices in the material I get. So I have to make the choices in the way I play the characters.

So many actors get caught up in their technique, and to be honest, I see it really getting in the way. I see them forcing things. I definitely do my best work when I'm free of that. But I think as an actor, I work really hard in preparing the roles.

The worst acting is about imitation.

The joy of acting for me is to be able to experience emotions in a safe environment. You can't scream and cry in the street because everybody will look. If you do it on a movie set, you get applauded.

All good actors are unpredictable, and a little crazy in a good way, because they feel more secure playing other people than themselves.

As an actor, our very palette is one of imagination. So it is a walk onto an empty space and then imagine the world beyond it is what we do.

Sometimes I think of movie acting as advanced pretend.

The main thing is the ability to control your instrument, which, in the actor, is yourself. Look the way you want the character to look. Sound the way you want the character to sound. Once you've trained the instrument to do what you want, you're in control, and you're free.

As actors, you do have to be aware of your audience. You can't act in a vacuum, even if that audience isn't exactly present with you.

As long as you have the acting chops and the desire to get inside a character, you can play anything.

Everything, I think, about acting is based on imagination.

It's true I have a hard time with the notion of creating a character. And I feel it's a limit. I'm always really impressed by actors who are able to construct a character, like Johnny Depp.

An actor should be able to create the universe in the palm of his hand.

I think when you're at your best as an actor, it is cathartic.

When you're an actor or any kind of artist, you use your life as something to draw from in every experience.

As an actress, I was trained to show emotion I did not feel, or no emotion at all.

I can't act, and so I have to live that particular character in my real life and then exhibit it on screen.