Mandy Moore Quotes

The thing a drama school can't give you is instinct. It can sharpen instinct but that can't be taught, and you have to have intuition. It's an essential ingredient.

I'd love to say I made the smart decision of picking projects that became hits, but with 'The Good Wife,' I read the script and something inside me said, 'I love this, I want to do this.'

Everything that I do is for sound goals. It comes from my gut. When I'm sitting in the studio, a mix isn't done till I feel it in my gut.

As an actor, I love working with directors. As much as I love working with other actors.

I think every actor is looking for a challenge, and to play something different, and to be a part of a project with other great actors.

People say, 'Well, whose career do you follow? Where do you see your career going? What movie do you want to do next?' And I can't tell you what type of movie I would go and do next. I would have to read the script and feel for a character. And if I feel in my gut for a character, I know that that's somebody I have to play.

I've discovered just how symbiotic the relationship is between writers, directors and actors. They ask the same questions and strip down texts in exactly the same way.

I don't know if I do anything to get into character: I just go with my gut.

For me, my rule in this industry is I've got to listen to my butterflies. So if I got butterflies, then those are the scripts I go after.

When I'm sitting in the studio, a mix isn't done till I feel it in my gut.

If there's one thing that I know how to do, it's talk to actors. From what I have experienced working with so many different directors in so many different things, a lot of them don't really know how to talk to us.

A lot of directors don't really like actors.

I look for scripts that give me a gut feeling that this is going to work.

For me, casting is very instinctive, and if I don't feel good about it, I just can't go ahead and make the film.

One thing I've learned as an actor as well as a producer is to trust my own instinct. When I first started acting I would sometimes have ideas about certain things, whether it's a scene, or a character or certain dialogue, that wouldn't be followed. I was never in a position to have the power to press the matter. Sometimes it wasn't even about my character. But I'd watch the movie afterwards and think I was right.

I've done a few movies where I really liked the project, but I wasn't sure about the director, and I still did it and my instinct was right, in the beginning. Even though it was a good story, the guy still didn't really know what he was doing.

As a director and an actor, I encourage improvisation but in character and in the moment of what it is.

As an actor, you want to remain vulnerable. You don't want to always have all the answers and you want to be fine doing things in the moment with your fellow actors.

If you know what it is before you even start, it's not as interesting. Central to being an actor is pretending, and the adventure of it all. That's why you become a junkie for different kinds of situations. I try to attach myself to people who really inspire me, and directors who are really passionate. That way, I can give myself more fully and trust the impulse behind why the film is being made, and I can be a little more irresponsible in finding out what the character is. I have to worry less about what the character means if I trust the director.

One of the wonderful things about being an actor is that every director is different.

As an actor, I've been drawn to those characters that are further away from who I may be.

I'm not the writer who says, "You have to say it exactly as I wrote it," because you don't get good work. You want somebody who's going to bring something interesting to it and really create a character with you. You see that with certain actors.

There are a lot of scripts that you can like, but rarely are there directors attached when you're in development with something and that's stressful.

I don’t have tons of scripts where I don’t know what to choose and I’m trying to calculate. It’s either I read something and I have an impulse to do it, or in meeting someone, I want to work with them, but it’s always been very obvious.

Marvel has this tradition, and I think that Sony has this tradition too, of hiring directors for Spider-Man who are dramatic directors. That are directors who are interested in human beings, in characters, in drama, and who are really good with actors. That kind of feels like a Spider-Man director to me. And because Spider-Man is always as big as the films that are being made at Marvel, it always is character and story. You can never take that out.