Mark Ruffalo Quotes

I'm certainly not one of those actors who remain in a dark place the entire time in order to be doing the scene. I sort of come in and out of it. It can be to the detriment of my performance sometimes!

I'd love to be one of those guys who could be like, 'Yeah, it's really exhausting,' but the truth is I'm not method. I don't take roles home.

One of the things you learn at drama school is not to play the result, but just to play the moment.

As always, with acting, you can't be too self-conscious. You shouldn't care about what people are thinking about you at the time because they're not caring about you, they're caring about the character.

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.

So many actors get caught up in their technique, and to be honest, I see it really getting in the way. I see them forcing things. I definitely do my best work when I'm free of that. But I think as an actor, I work really hard in preparing the roles.

Because I was able to submerge myself into the character, I didn't have to go back and forth. You don't have to work hard to bring emotions. It all just comes naturally, you're there living it.

I had an acting teacher tell me once that if you're playing a car salesman, you don't want to be an OK car salesman, you want to play the best car salesman.

I tend not to have any references to anything. I just jump into the script in front of me. If you reference too much, you have no idea if the performances are right.

I never like to go out of character when filming starts. I fear that if I do, I might not be able to pick it up again.

I do whatever I need to do to get into character. Sometimes it's being incredibly quiet, and sometimes it's being loose and goofy.

I love to take actors to a place where they open a vein. That's the job. The key is that I make it safe for them to open the vein.

I'm not the kind of actor that can go completely cold into an emotional scene. I have to transport myself emotionally by whatever means possible, and that basically means you carry the situation with you all week, all episode or all day beforehand.

The way that actors talk about acting is generally quite punishing, and I think actors want to put forward the idea that they do all of this work because, you know, it's a post-De Niro world, when, largely, in fact, it's almost never true.

I think substitution is a huge part of acting, but I don't personalise my work that much.

I think there's a lot of mythos about what's required in acting. The way that actors talk about acting is generally quite punishing, and I think actors want to put forward the idea that they do all of this work because, you know, it's a post-De Niro world, when, largely, in fact, it's almost never true.

You hear stories of intense actors who can't shed their character and who don't know who they are for a week or two after. I'm not that guy, man.

For me, acting is a series of impressions rather than trying to find one line through to the end, which risks becoming more of a presentation.

I take my time to get into the mindset of the character and say my lines. I really have to be the person that I am playing.

I am not an enormous believer in research being the be-all and end-all. I get suspicious when I read about actors spending six months in a clinic, say, in order to play someone who is sick.

I kinda lose my mind in 'Fringe,' or at least my character does. Whenever I'm acting, I tend to accidentally become unable to switch off the character. I'm a little bit of a method actor, but without really wanting to be.

I wish sometimes that I could be Daniel Day-Lewis and say, 'You know what? If you want me to do this, I'm going to need a year to prepare myself.' But if I do that, they'll say, 'Thank you very much,' and they'll take someone else.

You've got to bring yourself to any character you do.

As an actor, if you want to explore something new inside you, you need to do something different that you don't do in your regular life. You need to think in a different way. It is my duty to think like the character that I am given and believe in his mindset; only then I will be able to portray it.

I don't prepare myself for any character unless it is really different.