Leonardo DiCaprio Quotes

Before 'The Walking Dead,' a few of the jobs before that were just like, 'Ugh.' I try and make everything as creative as possible, even when I get the script and can't imagine what I'm going to do with it.

I'm not the writer who says, "You have to say it exactly as I wrote it," because you don't get good work. You want somebody who's going to bring something interesting to it and really create a character with you. You see that with certain actors.

As an actor, our very palette is one of imagination. So it is a walk onto an empty space and then imagine the world beyond it is what we do.

When you have the cast, the sets, the lights, an opera takes on its own life. I'm not one of those directors who marches in with a set of plans.

Talking to actors is the same as talking to any other artists; it's getting into the moment for them, and making sure they can lose themselves in the performance!

Actors are such wonderful creatures and such wonderful instruments. It's always different on the page or in my head. I hear it differently. I see it differently. And then, you give it to an actor, and it comes alive in a way that you didn't expect.

I always prefer shooting on locations, because when I'm at home, it's harder to sort of get lost in the world of whatever you're making.

Maybe I'm a glutton for punishment, but I enjoy anything where you get to flex your acting muscles, you get to really go for it.

There was a time during 'Gone Girl' that I'd come home, and I'd say, 'I get to be every part of being a woman in this role.' For me, I feel it much more as a springboard for the work I'm going to take on thereafter.

'The Fosters' is such a fun show to shoot, and I always look forward to getting the new script because we keep pushing the boundaries.

It's a very different thing when you're creating the world as opposed to when you're just part of the world. I love the detail of it, the problem-solving of it, and I love working with actors.

In 'Haraamkhor,' I have explored a few things which I wouldn't have been able to do in bigger films. The process of shooting this film was so organic that it enhanced me as an actor and an artiste.

For as long as I can remember, I was always creating random characters.

Realizing that my surroundings were going to be built around me, the way that I performed, we helped the directors through the performance, to create the world that we were going to be seen in. I was very fascinated with that.

The actor shouldn't edit themselves or be anxious. And the actors that I admire are always the ones who are inventive and their imaginative life in free-willing. It's a director's job to go, "No here, don't do that, go there."

On set, the playground for the character, how much it takes varies. Is it like ballet, is it like jazz? The content always lends itself to the form, and it's really not mathematics.

It's a neat experience to go from the blank page to an actor elevating it to the audience understanding it - the full life of that is why I became a writer.

I don't think an actor needs to necessarily go through his things to do his job. I think it's way more important to imagine. And then, when you're imagining, your experiences, your images and your own personal things will show up, but you keep imagining. You don't get stuck in your own personal things, otherwise you are telling your story in every character, and that's not interesting for anybody.

I wanted to work on a cable show and with a writer/director because that's a much more fulfilling and freeing experience, as an actor.

I'm just an instinctive actress, I've never had a lesson in my life.

Look, I'm an actor, I don't profess to understand much of anything

I really am a character actor, in my heart of hearts, because I really do like developing characters and painting a past for them.

You have total control of it, and when you're an actor, you're subject to production design and costumes and directors and studio choices and producer choices, but when you're writing it, you're creating your own little world in your head, peopled with your little characters. No one is in there monkeying with it, at least not at first - though they will. With this and the other projects I'm working on, it'll have to be given away, and it'll have to be someone else's property.

The goal is to be both disciplined and loose, so that the writing does not turn into a task or a chore. To leave myself behind, along with the mechanics, and disappear into the lives of my characters.

When I start a movie, I already feel like I'm in it. I'm not a jobbing actor anymore; most of the films I do, I'm involved with development. Some, I've taken from scratch, and worked so heavily on the script, I'm embodying a lot of the character by the time I even get close to filming, because I've asked so many of the questions that I do. There is nothing better than being able to ask all the questions, do all the work. It's when you let it go that you fly.