Denis Lavant Quotes

When you act, your whole body is the instrument.

When eventually I started to act a bit more, I realised that circus school had taught me something that a lot of actors my age didn't have: physicality. They didn't know how to move. Acting is not all about talking. There is something animalistic about it.

My mother was a dancer, so I like to use the body as part of the instrument of acting.

I am dancing all the time. Every gesture, the body line of every pose, the way I get from place to place, the movement in the acting - none of it would be the way it is if I weren't a dancer.

When you step back and watch people, you realize that we use every single body part. Movement, dance - I find it genius because it's ultimate expression, really.

I use my hands a lot while acting.

You have to learn to express differently. Whenever I do TV or film, I ask if I can see the shot to see, to see if it's full body or a close-up. That helps me understand how to communicate.

I never liked miming.

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.

I think there's something to be said for being physical in acting.

I studied and performed and even taught mime years ago.

Body language is essential for an actress, even if you don't use your body in an athletic way. Just to be free, to use it like your voice. A body can be small and have incredible violence. A body talks.

You have an awareness of your body and how to use it and I think that if you can embody a character physically it's another really useful tool.

I realised how important it is to have your body movement, your diction, tonality, dialogue delivery and to be in rhythm because everything is musical.

To be a good actor, you need to be able to emote with your body.

My background is in dance, but as soon as I found acting and realized that I could entertain people, not just with my body but with what comes out of my mouth, I was into that.

Dancing is more than just moving body parts; it is a pathway of expressing your deepest inner thoughts.

I'm a very physical actor. I use everything - toes, teeth, ears, everything. I don't simply mean physical in the sense of movement and vigour. I find myself remembering the shape of a scene by how I'm standing, what I'm doing.

I think dancing is contributed hugely to how I am as an actor, just a level of comfort in my body and in movement. Things can become strangely physically technical when you're acting, and often something that just feels so unnatural is actually what you need to do in a certain scene.

Really good acting is not about dialogue. It's really just about small moments that really make the whole entire scene and the intention completely different than even maybe what the characters are saying. Two characters could be saying, "I hate you, and I don't want to be with you anymore!" But yet somehow, their toes are just inching more, you know, closer to each other. So a really big thing about acting is really just with your body.

I do use my body a lot, to click into a character.

I believe that dance was the first art. A philosopher has said that dance and architecture were the first arts. I believe that dance was first because it's gesture, it's communication. That doesn't mean it's telling a story, but it means it's communicating a feeling, a sensation to people.

You learn to control every aspect of your muscles, your face, your toes, your fingernails. And that is how you tell a story, through movement.

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

There are times when I consciously give the character something physical - a walk, the way he sits, how he talks, or his lack of physicality, which is like a physicality.