Benicio Del Toro Quotes

As an actor, you think you know your craft, you know the conflicts in your character, but often you don't.

Film acting is really the trick of doing moments. You rarely do a take that lasts more than 20 seconds. You really earn your spurs acting onstage. I needed to do that for myself. I would hate to say at the end of everything that I never did a stage play.

I do my independent stuff where it's real acting if you like. Intense, drama stuff. I love me actions.

It was my first straight dramatic role, and the most adult, intelligent one I have ever played.

I'm not looking to do 'Half Nelson' next, but to play anything that's a little more complex is really fun.

We play many emotions in our careers, emotions that in real life we would perform just once. For example, my character has died in about 10 films, so you have to keep searching for different ways to do it!

I think film and television actually is a lot harder. Acting onstage is physically more arduous, but to get to emotional truth within a scene, it's much tougher to do it on film.

As an actor, your first priority is the work - immersing yourself in the role, backstory, and bringing that to screen.

Every character I approach, from 'Forrest Gump' all the way up to 'The Spoils Before Dying,' has a different set of requirements and always fascinates me.

The experience with 'The Knick' is a singular experience. That experience taught me a lot about acting and about being on camera for extended periods of time to try to create a character arc that travels.

I would like to portray something that would challenge the actor in me.

Actresses cannot have any inhibitions while portraying bold characters. It is something that we learn on the first page of the book on acting.

I think my concerns are the same as every actor. Can I find this character and make it come to life properly?

My preparation is mainly just knowing the lines and getting in and knowing where your character is, knowing what it's about and having ideas that you can put in on the day.

Now there are certain things you have to prepare - like dialect and special skills. But in the moment, interaction between two characters on the page doesn't need - for me, I don't need to prepare that.

I do not use any set methods, not even The Method. The character after all is in the lines.

When you know your cast well and their strengths and weaknesses, you can start writing for them, just the way Shakespeare wrote for his actors.

A big fear of working with an actor that's never been a lead in a film before is that you're going to have to work really hard to pull a performance out of her.

In choosing any role, I ask the same questions: what kind of part is it? is the role challenging? does the director have a vision? is the story moving? etc.

An actor matures with experiences, and the more the emotions he/she has been through, the greater the intensity of performances.

Usually I'm frustrated when I look at my films and I don't believe that I've made a real transformation beyond my usual sets of gestures and expressions. I still have this nagging feeling that it's me, that I didn't create a unique character.

I think the buzz of acting is playing people different to you, and for me, that means traversing all genres.

The process changes slightly from role to role. Obviously, there are different things you're called on to do. You're not digging deep for Basher Tarr like I was for Paul Rusesabagina, but at the end of the day it's still all make-believe and you still are trying as realistically as you can to depict these characters.

As actors, we want to choose somebody who has conflicts. I can't be always playing the girl next door. What's the challenge in that?

My mentor Jon Simmons introduced me to the Stanislavski system, which is so heavy on back-story. So you write and write and write these back stories about a character and then you throw it away. So then on set, if it doesn't come, then you didn't do your work.