Nicolas Winding Refn Quotes

If an actor or actress is recognizable, that changes our perception of them. Sometimes you can play against type, or you can just repeat what they've already done. It can be an obstacle; it's a very fine line.

After I tasted success with erotic thrillers, a time came when I was being offered only films belonging to that genre. The industry loves repeating a success formula, and the audience had formed a certain image of mine in their minds.

When you're stretching yourself, as a role like 'Blue Jasmine' did for me, you risk falling flat on your face.

I believe the more successful an actor becomes, the more chances he should take. An actor never stops learning.

Irreversible is not glamorous at all. I try to do different things because I want to grow as an actress and I like to take risks.

I try to be fussy about the parts I play. I think that's quite prudent, it means you're stretching different muscles, and you're scaring yourself by doing something which is out of your comfort zone.

I'm all for trying anything once; otherwise, you end up like David Guetta - reproducing the same formula over and over.

If someone offers a film, I'm willing to do it if it's something I have not done before or pushes my boundary.

As an actor, overexposure can affect you negatively if you keep repeating yourself. But thankfully, my films are really different from each other.

I have always wanted to play different kinds of stuff, but it's hard, first to find good material, and then to change people's perception of you so they'll let you do it. I mean, I would really like to play a poet, but once they get this notion of you as a street guy, it's hard to change that.

If you get a show named after you, and then play another character, that's fine. But if you do a show that's an ensemble show like... MASH, then you're in trouble.

I really do think that every time you play a role well, you are in danger of being identified with that role until the next big thing comes along.

I like conflict, drama's conflict and if you don't have that in the character it's really not a worthwhile role to play for me.

It's easy to get stagnate, if you play the same character. In New Moon, I felt like I was going a little bit deeper.

The most exciting acting tends to happen in roles you never thought you could play.

I'm always being asked to play roles or characters that I don't really resemble.

The hardest things to do in any art is to risk failure and put yourself out on the line.

I don't want to repeat myself. I'm not going to play a guy like Allen in Happiness again any time soon because I did that and I don't want to tarnish or dilute that film by doing it again, maybe less well.

You cannot play for safety and make art.

You absolutely feel, as a black actress, that you've got to ride the wave because there's just so few roles. I hate to play that card, but it's the truth. There's not a lot of roles.

At the end of whatever we're doing, I always feel like I want to go back and start over again because now I have a better sense of what it is. I feel that with everything. Like, if you're doing like a long run of a play and you're doing it seven shows a week, at the end of it, I want to go back and start from the beginning.

I never set my sights low. I've always believed most people are ruined by the limitations they put on themselves. I was never afraid to take that step, to see what I was capable of doing. Does luck play a role in success, particularly in a creative field? Sure it does. But if you don't have the balls to give it a shot, you're destined to fail.

When you want to put something into your part that is not in the play, you must ask the author-or some other author-to lead up to the interpolation for you. Never forget that the effect of a line may depend not on its delivery, but on something said earlier in the play, either by somebody else or by yourself, and that if you change it, it may be necessary to change the whole first act as well.

It was the challenge of that that I found daunting, but also engaging and interesting [to play Maigret].

I am trying like Klee, to create something that will have a life of its own, that can put me in real danger, a danger which I willingly take on myself.