Joshua Leonard Quotes

As an actor, you have to find reasons why your character made her decisions, and you have to empathise with her.

You try to get to know your character as best as you can before you start filming - what's written and not written.

I think substitution is a huge part of acting, but I don't personalise my work that much.

If I'm doing my job as an actor, the audience knows everything I know about the character.

Well, you know, with every character, if you're going to expose yourself, you've got to figure out every detail that you're going to play. So there's no character that you can just go put on his shirt and be fully prepared.

My school of thought with going into a character is that you have to understand where they come from, and you have to empathize with them.

Part of an actor's job is to find correlations between your own life and the life of the person you are playing.

I do build my own backstory as an actor. It's important to know where your characters have come from in order to know where they're going - in order to exist in that state of being.

When I start thinking about a role, I read the script a few times and then let it sink in - and then take some time to develop how that character is going to play out and what he's going to do.

When I look at a character, whether he's good or bad, one scene or 10 scenes, I just have to find my way in.

I wouldn't say I'm a Method actor, but I do try to focus very deeply on what character I'm playing, and everything else goes out the window. I forget about everything. I try to get everything else out of my head.

I find that I kind of have to sink into the character.

For me, as an actor, the challenge is mostly before the film starts when you have to get into the psychology of the character.

With every character that I've ever played, I felt like I just understood the way that she thought and how she was.

It's always interesting researching characters and as I get older and the more that I work in this business, I do more and more of it because I realize how important it is.

I'm not the kind of actor who goes into exhaustive research for each role.

I really connect with every character that I've played, just because I kinda have to; as an actor, you want to take them in and get to know them and like them; because they're evil, you kinda have to like them so that you can understand them and play them and play them with some kind of empathy.

I try to think what the character is thinking. Then, hopefully, I begin to feel it. I act and react not because I'm recalling a dog killed by a fire engine, but because I'm concentrating on what the character is going through.

So much of movie acting is in the lighting. And in loving your characters. I try to know them, and with that intimacy comes love. And now, I love Voldemort.

I feel like there are things I can relate to in every character. But I feel like when you read a script, you don't get to see the definition behind someone, you just get to read what the person goes through and find a place to come from to make it real.

Sometimes the director will want you to write about the character, sometimes he'll want you to live in the location that the character is from or something like that, but I don't usually make a lot of notes or anything like that.

What I mostly do is take the script, analyse the hell out of it, see what's in there, see what kind of person I'm dealing with, and then forget I'm playing a father and just play a person who exemplifies all those things.

When I get a role, I try to delve as deeply as possible into the character.

I don't really prepare for each role the same way.

I take my time to get into the mindset of the character and say my lines. I really have to be the person that I am playing.