Kirsten Dunst Quotes

As an actor, you're lucky if you get a month before a project starts. There are times when you get a day before a project starts. So to be able to really sit and inhabit that mind and the story is really beneficial, and it really helps for me to be able to then compartmentalize as we're shooting and detach and go somewhere else.

When you're acting, you do have to prepare yourself for doing that. You have to leave behind - or you try and leave behind - anything that's going on in your personal life.

I don't ever recall being nervous before performing because I've already stepped into the shoes and the clothes of the character.

I never don't know my lines. I never take the audition pages into the room. I end up relying on them or looking at them too much, and it makes me feel unprepared, so I always learn my lines without fail.

I was not nervous while making 'Nazar' because I was well prepared. I took three months to prepare. When I went on the sets, I knew what I was doing.

In order to make Alma innocent and open, I had to forget that I'm stressed as an actress because I'm making a film with Paul Thomas Anderson. I had to let go of everything and hold onto the text. The language was like a rope I could cling onto and make my way blindfolded through the shooting.

While I deeply admire actors who deeply prepare, it's just not something I do.

My strength lies in prepping. I'm not someone who can just walk onto the set and perform.

All that acting and all that stuff and emoting and crap will come after you know what you're doing. So when you get - when I get on stage, I don't have to think about it.

I didn't have to audition. That's common, but it had never happened to me before. Normally, I hate auditioning. I need to stew and think... let the character develop and grow inside me.

I'm the sort of actor who likes to talk about what we're going to do.

I spent lunchtime in a grave during the filming of 'Bloody Mama.' When you're younger, you feel that's what you need to do to help you stay in character. When you get older, you become more confident and less intense about it - and you can achieve the same effect.

When I was a younger actor, I would try to keep it serious all day. But I have found, later on, that the lighter I am about things when I'm going to do a big scene that's dramatic and takes a lot out of you, the better off I am when I come to it.

You know, I've never been much of a method actor. I feel like, with every project I go in extremely prepared and I like to have a good time.

What's interesting about the process of acting is how often you don't know what you're doing.

All the things you can do to prepare for a role that free you, in the moment, are great. You have this muscle memory for things. You don't have to act it as much, once you've done it enough.

What I do is just go over and over and over my lines and learn the script so well that I can just be easy and relaxed. That's the way I always work.

In acting process, it's very difficult to explain. It's something very intimate, very private.

I don't really prepare for each role the same way.

The first time I thought I should be an actor was in school. I thought, 'At least this is something for which I won't have to study.' But I've realised that an actor needs to be constantly unsure about what he's doing and about what's going on around him. The moment you think you've nailed it, you're dead.

Music is a very big part of my preparation as an actor.

I'll read a script maybe twice, but I'll think about the role more than I'll rehearse lines.

I don't think I do that much to prepare for roles in general.

Acting is just a process of relaxation, actually. Knowing the text so well and trusting that the instinct and the subconscious mind, whatever you want to call it, is going to take over.

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