Maggie Gyllenhaal Quotes

Sometimes I'll read things in the script and think, "That's not how humans behave," or "I don't understand how to do that role and make it seem like I'm not some kind of strange alien or on a sitcom." I don't get it, and when I feel that way, I have to listen to my instinct. My initial instinct does lead me in a direction that I can trust.

In the moment of acting you don't feel like anything, you feel like the person, as much as you can.

Sometimes you can just step into the character, and you get all your feelings and emotions just from sympathizing with her and being her. But then, other times, you just have to resort back to anything that you've been through in your own life and try to play that.

The closer a part is to you, the harder it is to play. Anything else is just imitation. If I'm playing a Russian countess, I get the hat, the accent, the outrageousness. Easy. Playing a murderess? Perfect.

Sometimes an actor performs a character, but sometimes an actor just performs. With writing, I don't think it's performing a character, really, if the character you're performing is yourself. I don't see that as playing a role. It's just appearing in public.

I don't like to intellectualize about my acting. I don't sit around and study the pages of a script over and over again. I don't worry whether the period is contemporary or three hundred years ago. Human beings are all alike. The main thing in acting is honesty, to feel the humanity and get to the essence of the character. You can't put anything into a character that you haven't got within you.

I don't think there's a certain part of a character I take with me. There's a certain part of me I leave with each character, though.

I think in every character there are aspects of yourself that you bring to it. But then it would be really boring to just play yourself.

I think in a lot of ways, writing, when you're really in there, is like being an actress because you're in somebody else's head.

When somebody is talking to you about something terrible on set with lines, and you believe what he says, sometimes it gives a strange vibe, because you wonder when that person is talking if he's talking about something that really happened to him and he's using the character.

With any character, the main objective is to bring authenticity to the role.

I'm the kind of person who if I was playing the role of someone who got shot, I'd probably want to get shot so I knew what it felt like.

I love acting and really taking on another person, another life.

Yeah, I think the common denominator - and this is probably going to sound like Acting 101 - but the common denominator is belief in the character in the moment.

That's what acting is. You're pretending to be someone else.

That's precisely what we do as actors: try to convince the audience we are somebody else. And if you can do that, you are really doing something.

When you take on a role, even if the character is somebody that you are dissimilar to, you have to identify with the role and look for an emotional connection even if there is not a biographical one.

I can't just say the words, do a lot of one-liners. I love each person I play; I have to be that person. I have to do him true.

In order to inhabit a character, you've got to embrace and empathise with them.

My job playing Sam Malone was to let the audience in, to love my bar full of people. And that informed my life.

You can't judge a character that you're playing, because then you're fighting against doing what the character's doing.

You draw on whatever's relevant to the part you're playing; it makes it more personal.

Acting is not acting. It isn't putting on a face and dancing around in a mask. It's believing that you are that character and playing him as if it were a normal day in the life of that character.

You don't want to play a character you can't inhabit or commit to fully.

If you're playing somebody who is not you, then you can imagine that you are that person. You can feel like he feels, move like he moves, look like he looks - in your own mind.