Benjamin Bratt Quotes

I cannot tell you that I ever fell in love with the theater as an audience. I fell in love with the theater as an actor for a period of time, but I have struggled as an audience, and I struggle more now than then. I was always a movie guy.

The best actors are always the ones who've directed as well, as they understand all the problems you face.

I did a lot of theater, so especially as an on-camera camera actor, there are so many things that aren't in your toolbox. They're somebody else's job. You think about editors and rhythm. Volume isn't even in your control.

In school, I was playing old men and women, babies, Russian people, and all sorts of weird parts - a lot of comedy - and that's sort of like home to me.

I'm reteaming with the producers of 'Twilight' on an awesome script. It's very serious, dramatic and different for me. I'm excited to see what's next. I love all aspects of film and all genres.

I like directors who have worked as actors. They know the experience.

Work is my balm. I've just finished my work in Ketan Mehta's 'The Rising.' It's one of the best films I've done. Such a fabulous line-up of technicians and artistes. Above all, I got the privilege of working with Aamir Khan.

When you're even on a regular movie set, you still have to suspend your disbelief. You're working there with only 3 walls of a room, and you're in costume, and you have a camera 6 inches from you and have a crew of 75 watching you. So even there, you have to crank up your imagination.

Of course being in movies is very exciting, and it's a wonderful thing for an actor to do.

I think it makes such a huge difference when the director has acting experience as well because it just means that he not only has a view of the film as a whole and the intentions of the scene in terms of the audience, he also has an actor's instinct of how to communicate something to us.

In a theater, the part is mine and I can control it as I want to. In the movies, I don't have direct contact, and I am fighting technical machinery.

In school, I was Martha in 'Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?' I loved that.

I started to do theater when I was a little boy at school, and then, I think because my father was a documentary filmmaker and worked for German television, I was of course fascinated by what he did. Then when I was around 15, I did my first movie.

I'd never done a straight play before, never, and it was very hard work - really, really hard work. It was dense, really wordy, and I was determined to learn every word of it - not just skip over bits and pieces.

Definitely as an actor, the experience you have, at least I'm talking for me, my experience as an actor is you go to the set and know what you're going to do, know your lines, you rehearse, you do your scene, you go back home. As a producer, for the first time I saw the whole picture in a completely different way.

I just love doing movies that I would want to see in theaters.

'Do the Right Thing' was like the first film where I really felt comfortable working with actors.

'Olive Kitteridge' is the only thing that I've done on camera where we had a day of rehearsal before we shot, and I'm so glad that that happened, because I was so nervous.

I judge movies on how much fun I had while I was doing them. I had a great time on 'The Right Stuff.' Doing that was fantastic. And there was the year I did 'The Rookie' and 'Far From Heaven,' which was amazing because those two different roles were just so far apart.

In every movie I do have a dialogue.

When you're acting and directing, you're standing there acting with another actor, and you're trying to do your performance, and at the same time you're watching their performance, and making sure the lights are in the right place, and if the person is wearing the right wardrobe. All these things are going on in your head.

There are projects I've done, such as 'Queen,' where I played Halle Berry and Danny Glover's son, where I'm so extremely proud of the work that I did that I will sit down and watch that any time.

I never thought about movies. I never thought about Hollywood. It was just being on the stage and being in New York.

I work primarily for the camera-it's not something I really talk about a lot, but it's part of the way I am as a movie actor. The camera is my girl, as it were.

In my first film, Five Corners, I played a very scary, violent crazed character, and it exposed me to a lot of directors.