Isabelle Huppert Quotes

Of course, when you work on a character, you try to understand her. You feel that everything she does has a reason.

I think it's my job to like any character I play - to understand and appreciate a character, to look at the world as much as possible from their point of view. I don't look at it just technically: learn the lines, figure out what gestures I want to bring and play, and that's it. I like to learn as much as I can about the person, and see what happens.

The first thing, the main thing, about how I work is I need to understand the character.

If you never fall in love with your character, you'll never be able to do that character justice. No matter who it is, no matter what the character does, you have to find the reason for it. Everyone's got a reason for what they do, even if it's a reason that they're not proud of.

I can't judge the characters I play, because it's for the audience to do. What I can try to do is to understand and embody what were they going through? How did they make the decisions they made? That to me is a more interesting way to approach something, rather than saying this person is a villain and that person is this and - because it's not very interesting to play that anyway.

For me, with any character, there are different ways that you approach understanding him, and in this film in particular, because I had the novel to refer to. It's always really helpful to have all of that information and all of those hundreds more words which give you an idea into the background and your character and all.

It seems that the analysis of character is the highest human entertainment. And literature does it, unlike gossip, without mentioning names.

It was our goal to dig into the characters and really try to find out why they think the things they think and why they do the things they do - and we got some amazingly candid and revealing interviews - but it's not my job to offer summary judgment on those interpretations.

As an actor, you have to be able to take all sides as well. You have to at least be able to understand things. No bad guy looks in the mirror every morning and says, boy, I'm gonna be a real bad guy this morning. He goes after his own what he's after, just like us good guys. You kind of have to take a stand and, a lot of times, you have to take the writer's stand or the stand of the character this writer has created.

Because as an actor, I really feel you cannot judge a character. You have to totally commit to that character. And for me to totally commit to the character, I have to find those places where I understand the sequence of behavior.

Now for the hitch in Jane's character,' he said at last, speaking more calmly than from his look I had expected him to speak. 'The reel of silk has run smoothly enough so far; but I always knew there would come a knot and a puzzle: here it is. Now for vexation, and exasperation, and endless trouble!

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.

Some actors might just do one thing, and another actor does another thing. I do an awful lot of preparation with the script, really. What I do is repeat the script, over and over and over again. Through that, it's almost like it seeps into my enamel. I'm reading all the characters, as well as my own. That is where the bulk of my preparation goes into.

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.

...being written by someone who might not quite understand the subconscious nuance of the character leaves us in varying degrees of flatness.

I really liked it [The Andromeda Strain], and I don't know that it ever had the effect they were hoping for. I don't know if they got the audience we were hoping for. But I thought it was very fun, and I loved the character [Jack Nash] I was playing.

I won't even think about acting in a role where I didn't do a back story for a character.

I think, in the initial process of discovering a character and the analytical process - and this is what I did take from Buddhism - initially I think there has to be an analytical, intellectual approach. And that has to be abandoned by the time you're playing the game.

It's interesting to talk to my mom about her character in Wild at heart, because she sees her as a mother who's just trying to protect her baby from a bad boy. I think that's why it works so beautifully - she has conviction about what she's doing.

I think a good actor will always know the character better than anybody.

You really try to work the character out and spend time in the headspace of the character. That's what I did.

I think when you have a character as richly drawn, I suppose then there are subconscious, mental notes that you've made.

I find that in preparation for a drama you can do a lot of character work and develop the character and know what you want to achieve and project throughout the course of the film.

My characters, I find them as I'm writing. It's quite incredible how fully realized they are in my mind, how many details I know about each of them.

All actors have to believe that our characters have a point that makes sense. Hopefully, they make sense to the crowd watching it, but at least he has to make sense in his own mind, in his own universe.