Penelope Cruz Quotes

If I can keep it light in between scenes, then that helps me dig down further than if I try and stay at that constant place all day. That's just me. Every actor's got their thing. But that's what I do.

Of course, fighting is one of the most emotional things that you can possibly do. You have to constantly deal with your emotions, especially myself. I have so many that that's where I get my energy from. But it's a matter of controlling them, and yeah, I just don't let nothing affect me.

You know, he told me once, completely exasperated, you've got one glass of water inside your head, with all the tears for a lifetime. If you waste them over nothing, then you won't be able to cry for real when you need to.

I still get mad. I still get upset. But I let it go more quickly.

With 'Taxi Driver,' I had this eureka moment. I realized that acting could be much more than what I had been doing. I had to build a character that wasn't me.

It is salutary to train oneself to be no more affected by censure than by praise.

I try to pick characters that I find interesting and complex and that I feel I can bring something of myself to.

I'm much softer than people think. I don't present to the world an emotional face. I'm pretty good at self-control, but I am easily moved.

The way I work emotionally is: I don't ever try to cry. I try not to, which is what for me produces organic emotion.

I'm not one of those people who can cry on cue. If I have to cry in an audition, I'm like, 'Okay, let me see what I can do.'

Crazy is so hard to play, there's nothing you can really tell an actor.

I went through this realization that acting, at its heart, is the ability to manipulate your own emotions.

You know how there's always the one girl in drama school who can cry at the drop of a hat? She has that emotional well she can tap into in a second? I'm not that girl. It takes a lot to get me to that place.

I know if I react, and I want to get mad, and emotions come to the surface, I think quickly of my friends who have died and how they overcame their struggle and used their cancer and their lives for the betterment of mankind, and it sets me back in place.

Strength of character does not consist solely in having powerful feelings, but in maintaining one’s balance in spite of them

After all the work I've done, I feel like I'm something of an emotion-smith. We have to tap into places on a daily basis that usually people only go in a rare occasion.

You can't perish because of your own feelings; you have to embrace those things as an actor because it's part of your palette.

In the first two episodes, before she becomes Queen, I could be a lot freer with my emotions, but as the series goes on, she develops an armour in order to cope with her circumstances. She has to be a sphinx, which must be so hard. Imagine never being able to shout, 'Shut up,' or cry, even in front of your own family.

As an actor, if you want to explore something new inside you, you need to do something different that you don't do in your regular life. You need to think in a different way. It is my duty to think like the character that I am given and believe in his mindset; only then I will be able to portray it.

I am not much of a trained actor. I have to get my brain and heart to go deep inside the situation, and then, probably, I can start acting. It takes me a little while to get out of it.

I don't let other people get under my skin.

I learned not to get too happy about good news or too distraught about bad.

We Finns don't show much emotion but it doesn't mean we don't have any.

It's quite a layered character that I portray in 'Jalebi' and I needed to deviate and cut-off completely from the world to get into a different zone as a character. I'm really glad it proved beneficial and worked to my advantage.

To get on a show where you're acting day in and day out for many, many hours - 15-16 hours sometimes - it hones your endurance, your ability to memorize, your ability to follow your instincts, because you don't have time to fret about your choices afterward.