Jessica Brown Findlay Quotes

Also, in my acting, I feel very much like a storyteller, exploring the flaws of the characters that I interpret. I look for the imperfections, and I love a character that is just so flawed.

I do build my own backstory as an actor. It's important to know where your characters have come from in order to know where they're going - in order to exist in that state of being.

From a writer's standpoint, each character and story presents its own unique challenges and delights. I'm deeply curious about all of my characters, and I love peeling away their layers to see what's underneath their skin, or secreted deep within their hearts.

I don't really ever think about whether or not I like the characters I'm playing. I'm more into the minutiae of their behaviour or what they're doing in a certain scene.

When I get a role, I try to delve as deeply as possible into the character.

It's kind of up to the actor to deconstruct the scene and deconstruct the character and figure out how to make it real. That's what I love about this job: It's sort of a puzzle each time, and figuring that out is sort the key, whether I'm playing a cop or a killer.

In many ways, acting is really like a science to me to figure out the human behavior of any character that I'm playing.

I don't categorize characters into one syllable. These are fully-rounded characters that I don't judge; I just play them.

When I take on a role, all I tend to do is get to know the script and ask millions of questions, and keep fine tuning what I think the character is trying to say.

When I look at a character, whether he's good or bad, one scene or 10 scenes, I just have to find my way in.

I find that I kind of have to sink into the character.

These people I play are not usually wish-fulfillment characters.

Whenever you have a role where you don't get to know anything about the character, you have to invent it yourself. You have to feel like it came from somewhere.

I have a very schoolish approach to acting. I like to do my homework, know more about the character, and study it. It's all about the craft.

In 'There Will Be Blood,' my character was someone who was an actor himself almost. He had a rehearsed quality about him. He was a performance artist in a way.

As an actor, I'm constantly striving to find the darkness in the lighter characters and the lightness in the darker characters.

The first thing I do when I read a part is see if I can identify emotionally with a character. If I make that connection, everything else is just working on knowing their life circumstances and manifesting those through practice and research.

I feel like there are things I can relate to in every character. But I feel like when you read a script, you don't get to see the definition behind someone, you just get to read what the person goes through and find a place to come from to make it real.

I never act my characters - I am them.

What I mostly do is take the script, analyse the hell out of it, see what's in there, see what kind of person I'm dealing with, and then forget I'm playing a father and just play a person who exemplifies all those things.

Ultimately, the idea of acting is to understand the people you're playing, and then where they're coming from is not so mystifying. You've got to detox a bit after, though.

You're trying to bring an emotional and psychological reality to a character that's on the page and make them three-dimensional.

There are always practical decisions to be made about any character you're playing.

If I'm doing my job as an actor, the audience knows everything I know about the character.

My school of thought with going into a character is that you have to understand where they come from, and you have to empathize with them.