Joe Cole Quotes

I take my time to get into the mindset of the character and say my lines. I really have to be the person that I am playing.

When you do a movie, you go to the location and get into your costume. It's part of your metamorphosis into your character, and it just made sense to do it.

I guess I'm probably a Method actor; I don't know... I just think of it as staying in the zone.

I think substitution is a huge part of acting, but I don't personalise my work that much.

With films, you completely immerse yourself in a character, get into who they are, live it and then release it.

You have to believe that you are the character or the thing or whatever the hell you're playing.

I find that when I play reality-based characters, it is only as fun for me if I have a lot of time to do research. If I don't it just isn't exciting but if I do, it can be fun because I can learn about that person and the world that they live in and I can become somebody else.

When you are portraying somebody that has a very specific emotional weight, you feel like you're really starting to abandon your own body and go to someplace else.

You draw on whatever's relevant to the part you're playing; it makes it more personal.

Acting is not acting. It isn't putting on a face and dancing around in a mask. It's believing that you are that character and playing him as if it were a normal day in the life of that character.

I'm always happier and a better actor when I can really lose myself in a character and become somebody else.

I like to be absorbed in what my character's doing.

It's interesting what happens when you take on a role, I think. What happens to me - without sounding too spiritual or too hippy, I guess - what happens, most of the time, you do a lot of research, and you get into the character, and at a certain moment, it's like the character takes over.

I lived my 'Mom' character. I became Devaki.

Sometimes you even start to sound like the character because you're living and breathing them every day on the set. It gets into your bones.

I do enter into character on set, but I can step out of it.

I believe in the fact that to portray a character convincingly, you need to live that character, own that character. You have to be earnest with every line that you deliver. However, it doesn't mean that you have to cut off your true self.

I personally like to talk to people when I'm not doing a scene, still acting as if I'm in Gotham when I'm on set because I don't really like to break character, since I sometimes get distracted. I may get distracted when I'm talking to people and having fun; then I have to check myself.

I just love to act. I like to get away, totally play a different character, someone you can get really involved in knowing. I've gotten really involved in some characters and written down little summaries of where they live and what their families are like.

I tend to get comfortable with the dialogue and find out who the person is in the script and try to hit that. People are sort of independent of their occupations and their pastimes. You don't play a politician or a fireman or a cowboy - you just play a person.

If you can walk into a set and feel the reality of it, then immediately you're not having to work to bring yourself into the character.

I'm not the kind of actor that can go completely cold into an emotional scene. I have to transport myself emotionally by whatever means possible, and that basically means you carry the situation with you all week, all episode or all day beforehand.

I never act my characters - I am them.

I like to try to make the characters I play be as human as possible.

Sometimes when you're acting, you only need a little bit of something to sort of channel or, you know, transport into a place.