Travis Fimmel Quotes

The best way to show an emotion is not through a character's words, but their smallest expressions - to take what an actor would visually do and try putting that down on the page for the reader to 'see.'

I discovered that silent film is almost an advantage. You just have to think of the feeling for it to show. No lines pollute it. It doesn't take much - a gaze, an eyelash flutter - for the emotion to be vivid.

I watched season four of 'The Wire.' They have subtle performances that they do through their eyes. You could watch season four with the audio off and still understand what's happening through their eyes.

I remember seeing the performance Samantha Morton did in 'Sweet and Low Down' where she didn't speak at all, and I loved it so much because she got to do so much work just by expressing herself in her body and her face. With expressions, it wasn't necessary to speak. I find that appealing.

One of my favorite actors is Paul Newman. He could tell so much with a single look, whereas some actors would need an entire five page monologue to give off the feeling of what he could say with just a single look.

There is this miraculous thing I heard Hugh Grant talking about - the thing about screen acting is that you can read people's thoughts. You are trying to register something inside and usually the eyes in cinema are where you will register that.

One of my favorite things to do is not to speak on screen. In theater it's different because there's a lot of emphasis on language - it's a different medium. But that is one of the most wonderful things about film. A person's face can say so much more than their voice can.

I like to use my hands. When I was in theatre in college, that was one of my biggest notes: 'You use your hands too much.'

Breathing is always key in any character. When you have a character with no voice, that makes it even more important.

Truly great actors carry their characters in silence with them. They communicate without words the relationships that predate the movie.

As an actor, you have many tools - your body, your voice, your emotions, mentally. In film, you have your eyes because they communicate your thought process. In fact, generally in film, what you don't say is more important than what you say. That's not so much the case for stage.

The greatest acting really is spoken without words, or at least I like to think that.

With all of the characters I've played, I feel like I've tried to communicate through my eyes and face, as much or more than with words. That's something that I like to watch in films, and something that I like to bring to the characters that I play.

Your internal dialogue has got to be different from what you say. And, you know, in film, hopefully that registers and speaks volumes. It's always the unspoken word and what's happening behind someone's eyes that makes it so rich.

You can convey a lot of emotion with just some eyebrows and mouth movement.

There's always so much more that can be conveyed on screen visually in the expressions of people's faces, in their bodies, in their body language. And also with sound design, with music.

Where words are restrained, the eyes often talk a great deal.

When you perform, you can convey emotions differently, and your look can reflect each of those emotions.

For me really good acting is about subtext.

It's hard to act with just your jaw.

The writing is important, but the way you say the line and the pause you give it, the facial expression - all of that is very important.

Nonverbal communication forms a social language that is in many ways richer and more fundamental than our words.

It's almost better most times to not talk in a scene. I think you can actually express a lot more without words.

I don't need dialogue to convey emotion or thoughts to my audience.

I understand why people went nuts for 'The Artist.' We use words so much, it's nice to be able to explore a different way of communication, to be able to express silently what someone - or something - is thinking or feeling.