Ben Mendelsohn Quotes

I think there's a lot of mythos about what's required in acting. The way that actors talk about acting is generally quite punishing, and I think actors want to put forward the idea that they do all of this work because, you know, it's a post-De Niro world, when, largely, in fact, it's almost never true.

I am not of the vein of actors - and I will not pretend to be one - that takes my character home with me. I don't.

I wish sometimes that I could be Daniel Day-Lewis and say, 'You know what? If you want me to do this, I'm going to need a year to prepare myself.' But if I do that, they'll say, 'Thank you very much,' and they'll take someone else.

I'd love to be one of those guys who could be like, 'Yeah, it's really exhausting,' but the truth is I'm not method. I don't take roles home.

The hardest part of acting is not when I'm acting, It's when I'm not.

All I have to do is be me on stage. But acting, I have to be someone else, and walk how they would walk and blink how they would blink. I used to talk about it bad like, 'Aw man, that person made $10 million a movie?' But now I understand why they do. I get it now.

I'm no Method actor. I've tried staying in character, and it's just exhausting.

I always hate it when I hear actors talking about the process of what they do, so I'll keep my thoughts to myself.

Before filming I'll be constantly thinking about my role at the back of my mind and slowly build up the intensity until I can explode on set. There is a very fine line between not quite getting there, and getting that bit too intense.

I am a professional actor, and I am very careful about being sincere to the characters I play.

As always, with acting, you can't be too self-conscious. You shouldn't care about what people are thinking about you at the time because they're not caring about you, they're caring about the character.

All my characters are me. I'm not a good enough actor to become a character. I hear about actors who become the role and I think 'I wonder what that feels like.' Because for me, they're all me.

For actors, you've gotta sometimes fill in your backstory.

It's not a pleasure torturing actors, although some of them enjoy it.

I don't bring my life into a character at all.

I definitely think it exercises an interesting muscle, auditioning for bad parts and trying to figure out how to make it real. I don't know what I'm talking about now.

I'm not an instinctive actor.

I don't usually like talking about acting or what my process is, and all those kinds of things, because I don't necessarily think it's helpful to talk about how I do my job.

No, I'm not a very methodologically pure actor.

People use the Method as a shield; it shields them from being vulnerable. I hear all these young actors who are like, 'I'm Method, I'm gonna go live in the house, you know, I totally get it, I've done it, I've been there', but one thing I know is it kills spontaneity.

I never thought of acting as a creative process. Christ, I used to go to the movies and see Brando talking like he was trying to sell shoes, and he was great. I thought anybody could do it. Then I tried it, and I got so uptight, I'm limited as to what I can do on film.

In LA, too many people want to go the quickest route from A to B. Method acting offers them that.

There's a fine line between the Method actor and the schizophrenic.

Ninety percent of the preparation we do as actors is just jive. It doesn't do anything.

I suppose I could be accused of taking acting too seriously and losing the fun of it. I do take my work very seriously; I take on the responsibility of it.