Ben Bass Quotes

It's kind of up to the actor to deconstruct the scene and deconstruct the character and figure out how to make it real. That's what I love about this job: It's sort of a puzzle each time, and figuring that out is sort the key, whether I'm playing a cop or a killer.

When I read something, first I have an instinctual, emotional response to it. But of course, acting isn't only just feeling an instinct for what's going on in the moment with the character. You have to be able to carve it out and consider, follow, and create the whole journey that the character you play is going through.

When we watch a film as actors, you have to understand that we always see much more than what's on screen.

As an actor, you can't play a flashback; you can't play someone's memory. You just have to play each circumstance as if it was real and understand that person's point of view.

I am not one of those actors who dwells on the histrionics and the subtext and future text of the character. I deal with the scenes that I'm doing at that specific time, because if I do that, they play in more of a real way.

As an actor, you are always looking for subtext, for layers, for what's going on underneath.

I'm the guy who plays human beings. I understand why the characters are doing what they're doing. When you play a villain, you don't play a villain: you play a human being doing what he thinks he needs to do to get what he wants.

Claude Rains was what we call an actor's actor. He was very involved with himself and his performance.

I can talk endlessly about characters, or why someone did this or that, and what that dynamic and interaction is. I really love it, and I think that actors really respond positively to the fact that I like to talk about that stuff, because I'm not sure that all directors do.

My mentor Jon Simmons introduced me to the Stanislavski system, which is so heavy on back-story. So you write and write and write these back stories about a character and then you throw it away. So then on set, if it doesn't come, then you didn't do your work.

I don't really ever think about whether or not I like the characters I'm playing. I'm more into the minutiae of their behaviour or what they're doing in a certain scene.

Actors will say, 'My character wouldn't say that.' Who said it was your character?

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.

'Longmire' is more of a show about the characters, and you couldn't pay a bigger compliment than to want to know more about my character, or the characters on the show.

I'm constantly thinking about the role, and there's an infinite amount of questions you can ask yourself about a character to the point that it's hard to find the boundaries of when to not work.

I look for characters who are emotionally driven.

I cringe at backstory. Because it never quite explains or gets into some psychological thing that is never quite right and never quite the truth and who knows why someone is some way.

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.

Every time I talk about 'The Shield' I kind of talk about it from three perspectives, as if I'm three people, because I'm a fan of the show. I'm in love with all the other characters and their journeys and their work. But then, as an actor, I love getting this kind of rich material and having to do it. As my character, did my journey finish?

Everything I've ever learned about acting - and I went to theater school - was about playing what the character wants and throwing yourself fully into going after what the character wants.

I'm an actor who believes we all have triggers to any stage of emotion. It's not always easy to find but it's still there.

Well, when you're playing a role, you have to think, 'What is ultimately motivating the character?'

My theory is that everything an actor does, from the way he looks at his watch to the way he moves across the stage, is in the service of advancing a story, and in that sense, it's all writing. In that sense we, while acting, write.

Some actors - myself included - like to know where your character's going: you like to know what the arc is for the character so that you can plan where you're going to give beats for this, that, and the other and give the audience what they want. But on 'Homeland,' you do the opposite.

If you only live in the world of the actor, and if you only live in the world of auditions, etc., then you don't really have a whole lot to offer when it comes to playing the humans that you're trying to audition for.