Kristin Lehman Quotes

I put a lot of time and energy and thought behind what I do and the characters that I create, and I don't want to do anything peripheral that is going to make an audience see me up there on the screen rather than who I'm playing.

I always find that I have to be emotionally on my character's side for it to be convincing.

I have just gained a deeper and deeper respect for acting and the whole art of it because you're really trying to live a life and to do the best justification for it.

I always want the audience to identify with my character in some way. I mean, sometimes you'll get characters that aren't very identifiable. Sometimes you can't relate to your character at all. I think it's important to keep the audience interested. But the best advice that I've gotten is to live in the moment.

The job of an actor is the same in all of them, really. I mean, you're just creating a character that you hope people will believe, so it doesn't make that much of a difference really.

I treat any scene the same - dialogue, action - you're still creating something in character. It's all acting, fighting.

I hate acting when I see it. I don't want to feel it, I don't want to see it, I want to be taken away with the story - I don't want the actor's ego in front of me. That's what I try to live when I do the work.

Acting is make-believe. I never believe I'm the character; I want you to believe.

You take what you know, and you put it through your own prism. If I play characters that break down or cry, it's Gary Oldman crying; it's not the character crying.

I can't act, and so I have to live that particular character in my real life and then exhibit it on screen.

I feel like my responsibility as an actor is to make characters as compelling and believable as possible.

The actor always must be in the scene, not above the scene. To communicate any larger ideas is my problem; it's how the narrative is constructed and directed that hopefully does it.

Obviously an actor draws on his own experience.

My job as an actor is to cover and expose in varying allowance that - so that the audience can peek through the window to the people I create.

If you have a very good concept of your character, you can snap into it.

The actor should not play a part. Like the Aeolian harps that used to be hung in the trees to be played only by the breeze, the actor should be an instrument played upon by the character he depicts.

That's what acting is - it's about... having the courage to allow your audience into the private moments of your characters' lives.

I think sometimes you can think up a story, but it's because you're comfortable doing that, but when you're an actor, one of the things that you have to do is take yourself out of your comfort zone.

The fundamental job of the actor is to tell about the human condition, to be a voice for the truest ideas and deepest emotions.

As an actor, I think the experience and the portrayal of the character is exactly the same. It doesn't make any difference what camera is capturing it. You have to do it with the same passion.

As actors, we have to take characters, and we have to feel for them and ultimately become them, and share that on screen so that audience feels that.

I think that's the great thing about acting: you get to play different characters and enhance one part of yourself to really bring that out and create a new person.

I don't see any difference in the craft of acting, in film or television. It's absolutely the same. It's different storytelling, playing a character over multiple hours, as opposed to two.

When I'm writing, I try to have the mask of my character on as I'm walking through the world. When I'm not at my desk, the rest of the time, I try to stay in that character and see the world the way that character would It's almost like method acting in a way — keeping the character close the way the actor keeps a script close and always tries to be in character.

I never like to go out of character when filming starts. I fear that if I do, I might not be able to pick it up again.