Guy Pearce Quotes

I like the anonymity that directors can have about their films.

I have a lot of compassion for human beings in life experiences, so I allow myself to feel what these characters are feeling and don't have a problem accepting that.

The more I love the character, the harder it is to get it wrong. I have to get to a point that I can speak for them.

The funny thing is that I feel close to all my characters. Deep, deep inside them all.

I care about all the characters I play, and I get quite defensive about them.

To read a character I'm not sympathizing with is generally quite a good, attractive proposition because I've got somewhere to go, I've got work to do, to try to understand why they behave like they behave, to relate entirely and understand them and to be completely emotionally connected. That is much more fun 99 percent of the time.

When a script moves me, I find that I immediately understand a character. Of course not completely, but I do understand.

I think when you play a role, you always have to be a defense attorney for that character.

When you're playing a character, as an actor or actress, you can't judge them for what they do. You really have to find what is in them that you have compassion for and fall in love with that character, regardless of what they do or how they behave.

You have to love the guy that you play, even if you play the villain, you've got to love him.

It would be hard to play a character you don't like - for me anyway - or can't find something in them to like.

I have to believe in the character to perform it.

You love all your characters, even the ridiculous ones. You have to on some level; they're your weird creations in some kind of way. I don't even know how you approach the process of conceiving the characters if in a sense you hated them. It's just absurd.

My job as the actress playing Hanna Schmitz, as the actress playing any part, is to understand the character, and to ultimately love the character. And I did love Hanna, absolutely, because I understood her as profoundly as I did at the end of the day.

As an actor, you don't really have a say or a voice in what the conversation of the show is going to be. So, as an actor, I'm just trying to make sense of why the character is making these choices, and somehow, in that way, you can sympathize or root, at least not detest, what this person is doing. That's, at least, my job in telling that story.

As an actor, you always want to root for your characters.

I always find something in all the characters I play. I fall in love with them a little bit.

Some parts stay with me for weeks afterward. It's these people that I play. They get under my skin, and I just can't let go of them. I have immersed myself into their lives and into their beings so much that they feel like a part of me.

I've never had as much success as when I say to myself, 'I get that. I know what the feelings that that character would be going through would be like. I can feel a through line from beginning to end.'

You're sent scripts, and for some, as soon as you start reading them, you feel an instant connection to the character. You know who they are, you know how to play them, and there is instant enthusiasm. Then, at the audition, you don't have nerves because of that natural affinity.

Good characters don't believe they're bad. As long as you as an actor believe in them and try to understand them, it's not hard to have empathy and sympathy.

Film is such a director's medium; you're really in their hands in terms of the real storytelling. As an actor, you can give a performance moment to moment and some of your takes will be used and some of them won't. I think there are great films you can make with bad performances, and vice versa. There are all combinations of those things. It's really down to the director what happens, I think, so that's why it's really good to work with very talented, bold directors.

There are certain directors where you know you're going to be good or you're not going to be there. There are people where you kind of know that if you miss the mark then it'll probably not be in the movie and that's very reassuring.

I think when you pay attention to the shots, you're aware of the fact that there's a director. Really, it's the director's job to disappear and allow the movie to just feel.

When I got the script for Thelma & Louise, when I met with the director, Ridley Scott, I said, "I don't want to do a revenge film. I'm not interested in doing that moment in the script after they shoot the truck, where it says they jump up and down and they're real happy about it".