Maria Bello Quotes

It's hard to get lost in a scene, to get into a character when everyone's standing around you on the set.

To play these twisted, tormented characters is very draining. You have to sit in the pocket of that character for the duration of the shoot, which is normally an average of three months, and that can be taxing!

I'm certainly not one of those actors who remain in a dark place the entire time in order to be doing the scene. I sort of come in and out of it. It can be to the detriment of my performance sometimes!

I remember my first scene with Alan Rickman, and I was anxious because he is a slight 'method' actor; as soon as he is in his cloak, he walks and talks like Snape - it is quite terrifying. But I really wanted to talk to him because 'Robin Hood' was one of my favourite films.

I had this spooky psychological thing about 'The Piano' before it began, which was how everybody was going to go nuts on the set. Because a film tends to set up the way people are going to behave.

I'm not the kind of actor that can go completely cold into an emotional scene. I have to transport myself emotionally by whatever means possible, and that basically means you carry the situation with you all week, all episode or all day beforehand.

We ask actors to come to work ready to open a vein, to be emotionally thin-skinned. If someone screams, 'What about my coffee?' it's not about the coffee; it's because they're working in an emotional state. It ain't easy being an actor.

The worst thing for an actor is a director that gets on your nerves and says things that actually confuse you.

Between takes I find it difficult to switch off and then try and re-emerge myself in the part, so I try to stay in that frame of mine all day. It can be exhausting and you lose a sense of self, but it is the method that works best for me.

I would go into a place that was quiet and isolated and think about how my character would feel in the situation, considering who he was and what he had been through. I would think about that even up to 30 minutes. And when I felt the character was in my body and I had left, I could walk onto set or into rehearsal.

I did 'Shameless' on Showtime, and I felt like I really tried to go super-method with that, and it would just make my days really hard to get in and out of character.

You know what it is, when I'm playing a role sometimes, I just tend to stay in that role. It's easier to maintain. We just shot a pilot in a very thick American accent. I feel like the character lives in me. Of course, my family tease me about it.

Sometimes I'm on a TV set, and I can't feel what I'm supposed to feel as that character because I've not worked my way up to that point. I think there's a bit more insecurity on a set - you've got to blag it, or you've got to do what you've been paid a lot of money to do in a very short space of time.

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.

Whenever I play a role, it's like I've been kidnapped inside my own body.

I do some really intense roles and it's not good to bring them home.

Often, when I am playing difficult roles, I have a problem sleeping because I can't leave the character behind.

Acting is something where you have to completely remove yourself. So, do I find acting easy? Absolutely no! Do I want to do more of it? Do I enjoy doing it? Do I feel appreciative to get this opportunity? Absolutely!

It certainly helps, I think, with some actors to understand the process of acting. You see what extraordinary pressure they're under, there's a huge circus dedicated to a particular moment and they're got to deliver and it can help that you, even if empathetically alone, understand what they're doing.

When I do a film, the days before or the night before, I throw up. Sometimes it's just in my mouth and I swallow it back, but sometimes it's real. Whatever it is, it's hard. I don't do the first five or ten minutes of my character's appearance in a movie until the middle of the shooting schedule because I don't want him to be defined by my nervousness. So, we do the middle of the picture first.

It was good but it was just a tiny bit uncomfortable because it was a day of lying in the bushes and I think I got a major muscle thing going on there! But it was good. It was fun. That is one of the things you get to do in film that you don't do, or that I don't do, in real life. I can't speak for Dermot [Mulroney]! But it was fun.

What happens is some of the characters I've played have voices that are so different from my own, that it would be ridiculous if I would dip in and out of that voice in between takes to ask for a coffee, or something. Or to gossip about whatever was going on.

Opening a play is just tough. The idea that actors are weirdly protected from it is a myth. If you imagine yourself having to spend two and a bit hours cooking bolognaise, remembering a whole major work by David Hare and speaking it at the correct moment between chopping carrots and stirring the onions in front of an audience - the normal human response is 'Please, can I go to the airport?'

I wouldn't want to try to make a living as an actor. I think actors... I give them a lot of credit for what they go through, but putting myself on the line like that would make me crazy.

When you take on the idea of playing someone like Jimmy Bulger, it's a radically different process because you're going into make-up. The only way you can do it is to come out of make-up looking like the guy. If you don't look like the guy, it's going to bug you, all day.