Thomas Jane Quotes

You have to be talentedly insecure in order to be a good actress. And then it's the director's job to make you more miserable and get a good take.

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.

First, you do a piece of material that begins and ends and has a flow; it's not chopped up as in a film, where in an extreme case you might be doing the last scene of the script the first day that you go to work, and you don't know enough about the character you're playing.

When I go on the set, I'm so rushed. When I see the actors at rehearsal, when I love it, I want to keep the mood - my mood and the actors' mood also. So I have to push the crew faster. I don't want to lose the mood.

Most of the film directors expect their actors to want to work fast.

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 process changes slightly from role to role. Obviously, there are different things you're called on to do. You're not digging deep for Basher Tarr like I was for Paul Rusesabagina, but at the end of the day it's still all make-believe and you still are trying as realistically as you can to depict these characters.

When you drop your guard in films, the acting process compensates. You get lazy and you start acting.

I understand, certain scenes have to have a lot of takes. As an actor, I think it's quite nice to have a handful of takes, because you don't want to do it once or twice; I think once or twice sometimes is quite terrifying because you don't really feel like you've given them what you want.

I don't usually like talking about acting or what my process is, and all those kinds of things, because I don't necessarily think it's helpful to talk about how I do my job.

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.

Film is a much lonelier process than theatre. You really don't have any rehearsal time in film. You don't shape it together... with theatre, there is a complete kind of family atmosphere. The sociable side of this business is the theatrical side, it really isn't the film side.

When you shoot a film, you have very little time to waste, and I try to go into the character as soon as possible and stay there as much as I can.

I'm not a huge kind of visual director. For me, it's all about the acting. There's no greater buzz than working with actors and seeing what they can do and how much they can improve on what you'd written. That will always be on the top of my list. It's a real privilege to see it live before anyone else sees it.

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

As an actor, you can steer a scene in another direction by playing it a little differently. And honestly? I like being an actor, and I want to keep having a career.

Well, usually when I finish one character, I'm looking for a role that's really different.

There's so much emphasis on Daniel Day-Lewis and his process, which is appropriately his own. But I was just blown away by his generosity as an actor. He's so giving as an actor that he just naturally commands the focus on set.

It is the task of several months and it is a fact that a girl, either while rehearsing or actually playing, may be training for some character or feature in some future production not yet definitely fixed even in my own mind.

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.

Same job, whether it's comedy or drama. Regardless of the weight of the role, I feel like the job is always kind of the same. Who is this person? What's this guy here, and how is he playing with this thing, and what's he trying to say? And what's the volley with all these other people around him?

It's a hard thing to do, to be given a script, and know that you've got to turn up on the first day of the shoot - generally without having had any rehearsal - and present a character. It's really baffling; it's incredibly hard to know how to begin, to approach it, other than just thinking about it.

As an actor, you're always looking for, what do I get to do? It's not just what do I say, but what do I do, too.