Lily Collins Quotes

For me, changing my physical appearance for a character is never a problem. If I have to look a certain way for a role, I just do it.

I do tend to play characters that have a lot of costume and hair change. I sort of like the change of physicality thing.

When you wear the costumes in a period drama, you already feel like a different person - the clothes make you stand differently, change your posture, the way you walk. You really have to have stamina - you have two hours in hair and makeup, and then another hour to remove all that.

Transformational acting was the reason why I became an actor in the first place. Your hair and make-up and the costume are the tools that you have, and it makes you feel like that person. When you look in the mirror, you don't feel like yourself, and it changes the way you move. I love that stuff.

There's different ways of getting into character. There's what's called 'the outside,' in which is finding the physicality of the character first. To give an example, in 'Gettin' Square' - Johnny Spitieri - that's how I found that character. I knew those people that I'd seen up at Kings Cross. I knew how they sounded.

When a role involves physical transformation, it helps build the character better.

I always love costume, and I'm always heavily involved in how things should look. Or how they should feel really, because that's part of the way I suppose I get into character in some ways. It's a lot about costume.

I just thinks it's interesting what it takes an actor to find their characters through the wardrobe, or the hair, or the way a character walks.

For me the costume is always a huge part of getting into character.

That's where everything starts, as an actor: you've gotta have great writing and great character development, and then you have really great materials to work from.

I hope everyone can give the audience that real, true experience. But Mandy [Moore] and I, we definitely jump decades, and I think trying to find a base look, so that I can go back to the Eighties, I can jump to the Nineties, it was like, "All right, Milo, you're living in a moustache for a little while." Which I'm perfectly fine with.

One of the fun things for me, about acting, is trying to transform. Transformational acting was the reason why I became an actor, in the first place.

There were two things that became apparent, pretty quickly into the process. One was that the muscles didn't take as much reconditioning as I thought they would. It was more like voice acting than I thought it would be. You're using your whole body and there are things that are different, but when you are doing a character, even in the booth, nobody is watching but my face will do different things when I do different characters.

That's my way in the very beginning - how to enter it [a role]. Very quickly in the process, I don't think about voice being separate from the way you hold your head or the way you sit or the way you put on lipstick. It's all a piece of a person, and it's all driven by conviction.

As an actor, you use the things from yourself that you can apply to the character.

You don't really have to do the things that your character is doing. But us actors, we use something called sense memory. I've certainly been drunk before, and part of my job is to recall that without getting drunk.

As an actor you bring some of your own experiences which can make things easier. You build off of it, but your imagination is always the best thing you have as far as creating things I think specifically for what that character is going through. But you're definitely drawing obviously upon things that you can connect to, and then you kind of mold the change that you're making into something that's right for the character.

As an actor it's always easier to shave or cut your hair for a role, but it's hard to put fake hair on or grow hair for a role.

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.

It's fashionable for modern actors to talk about getting 'inside' a character. But you can't get to the inside without getting the outside right first.

The process of acting is no different [playing human or ape]. You're embodying the character. You're creating the psychology and the physicality. You're living the moment.

As an actor, you can have your own backstory and prepare all the details that you need to know for your character.

I've tried most of my career to transform myself towards characters.

I love working with actors. I love to see what they're going to do. There's just something very thrilling and satisfying with being involved with something, all the way through the process [making movie].

Half of the acting I do is actually done by the hair.