Naomie Harris Quotes

With most good scripts and good shows, they expect the actor to bring some of their ideas to the backstory of the character. It's always a good collaboration between the actor and the writer and the director to try stuff out during the process.

Bill Condon, I must say, may have been one of the best professional experiences of my life, collaborating with him. He, himself, is an Academy Award winning screenwriter. He is a storyteller first and foremost, so we speak the same language. We approach things always from the story.

Nobody should expect an actor to have these wonderful ideas and concepts about the world: they pretend to be other people for a living.

I shoot people in a way that makes the audience feel equal to them. And it's hard to express and it's hard to execute but I think it works on every level - the choice of the material the choice of the actor, my relationship with the actor, and so on.

I just try not to look at any role as a comedic role or a dramatic role. I just try to stay in the movie I'm in.

In terms of the character itself, I can't really say that I find anything really difficult. I enjoy the character so much I don't perceive difficulty in trying to be him. It's just a matter of how do we get there.

I don't act in the way other actresses act, in terms of building or creating a character. I don't transform myself into the role, I invest myself in the role.

I find it easier to play someone who is so far from me because you create someone - you build this person based on the story and the script, with the director.

Personally, I read a lot of scripts.

I'm not the kind of actress who asks a lot of questions of my directors unless it's something I really need to know.

I allowed the scriptwriter to come to my parties for research and it's a good thing he did otherwise I don't think Personal Services would've been so good.

I always think that the deal, once I do the script, sort of the experience I go through writing, which is everything you can imagine, but I always think it's the one thing I can do when I'm directing is say is that it's all about the actors, that I can say, 'We're all here to serve the actors.'

The job of an actor is the same in all of them, really. I mean, you're just creating a character that you hope people will believe, so it doesn't make that much of a difference really.

I think you've got to talk to the director, see the director's films and recognise that it's important that the work fits right in and see if as part of the movie.

As a director, it is important to understand the actor's process.

With a film, I do my best to understand the author's intentions and try to bring the characters to life.

If I read a script and find it engaging and I start making choices in my mind on how to approach the work, than that's a good indication that it is something worth pursuing.

Unless you're playing a historical figure, a writer or director can change their minds. And sometimes your job is to make them change their minds - to make them believe that you're the one that can do it.

I'm definitely one of those actresses who comes to a set knowing how I want to do a scene, and I definitely love input from my directors and my writers.

To this day I over prepare. I draw storyboards for every scene - chicken scratches so crude that they amuse and horrify the crew. I send out shot lists, act out the scenes, and search for a theme that I can relate to. It's my favorite time of the process.

My number one passion is acting, but I also think there's something so special in being able to support a script and an idea and take it all the way through to fruition. I think that process is so rewarding.

I find all of my performances come down to mathematics in a sense - how do you approach the problem of this character? Sometimes I crack that problem, sometimes I don't.

Doing a movie is a stressful thing. You spend months of you life focusing into that one project, and I want to make sure I do something I really like or I'm really passionate about.

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.

There are a lot of times that if a detail in a scene or a beat, feels unnatural, they'll allow me to explore another direction to go until we're all comfortable with what we are doing.