Calista Flockhart Quotes

When preparing a role, I work first on the body language and physical aspects of the performance; the psychological dimension comes naturally once I'm in character.

I'm very kinesthetic, and when you're that way, you just feel it in your body. I know that other actors think with the logical part of their brain, but I wear my character inside my body, even when I'm away from the set.

Some of the best actors in the world are very exterior actors, Anthony Hopkins being one of them. He knows exactly how to turn his face to get a certain expression. He knows exactly what to do with eyes, and with his voice. It's very exterior.

I'm a physical actor in that I start with a physical sketch of the character. I find it easier to find inspiration from the outside in. If I find the character's tensions and the way he carries himself or looks, that's going to affect how I talk. So that's how I start to create that person.

Unless it's a specific accent, or something about physicality you have to change, I am generally not such a conscious actor.

I try to allow the spirit of the character to live through me. That's the only way I know how to approach acting. I have to live it.

If I get the walk of a character, that helps me find them. So I'm constantly looking at airports and train stations, registering walks.

You have an awareness of your body and how to use it and I think that if you can embody a character physically it's another really useful tool.

Acting is very physical, even when it doesn't appear to be. It's about the arc of your body's language through a film.

I'm very much the type of actor that once I embody the character, I could stay in it from the beginning to the end.

When I'm trying to find my way into a character, the voice and physicality are the first two things I do.

As an actor, you use the things from yourself that you can apply to the character.

The process of acting is no different [playing human or ape]. You're embodying the character. You're creating the psychology and the physicality. You're living the moment.

I play a lot of characters where I don't even speak in my own voice. I learned about focus and I learned to trust that things can work when they're not heightened and that it's interesting when things are pared down.

When I first was offered the role on Rise [of the Planet of the Apes], I always played Caesar as a human being within ape skin.

I don't see any difference in the craft of acting, in film or television. It's absolutely the same. It's different storytelling, playing a character over multiple hours, as opposed to two.

It's fashionable for modern actors to talk about getting 'inside' a character. But you can't get to the inside without getting the outside right first.

Psychologically, you learn the values that are inherent in the dialogue, and you learn to apply it to the way you read the lines. That's acting. You're not yourself saying those lines, you're somebody else.

As an actor in the theater you're taught that you never play a bad guy. You have to love who you are. You can't say, "Oh, I'm a bad guy." How do you play that?

I use a lot of sense memory and, well, I can't really avoid getting into character.

The real challenge of acting for me, I suppose, is just getting to know a character very, very well and just applying what I know about them to every single scene. That's what it can be broken down to.

the older I am, the more I refuse to treat my work as therapy and the more I think it's less honest to do that, less about acting. When I was younger, I sometimes used personal things in creating characters, to the point where I thought maybe it was a little bit dangerous - at least for me. But I don't feel that somebody can only be good in a character if they are really becoming that person or really suffering.

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. I spend like 90 percent of my waking moments walking around thinking: "What does this character do? What is his relationship with so-and-so?" Always, really. Too much!

As an actor, I've learned to become a detective. You have to figure out who that person is. If the character is a thief, you have to figure out what makes them a thief. Whatever the prevailing idiosyncrasy is, I have to find it in the script.

I do use my body a lot, to click into a character.