Holliday Grainger Quotes

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

I think you can really tell a good actor if you can put a camera on them and they can just talk and emote and react and you don't have to keep cutting away from them, because they are the language and the behavior. It's all a tour-de-force performance.

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.

Acting is something different to everybody. I just know that if you watch an actor or actress getting better and better, I think that's them just understanding themselves better and better.

Acting is reacting. You can't react if you're not paying attention, if you're not listening.

One of the things I really like about Victorian novels is the close anatomisation of character. People's gestures and mannerisms and the quality of their thought is very closely identified and analysed.

I would say what Mad Men has taught me has been a super elevated evaluation of text in general, and understanding subtext, and understanding where a character comes from - what he means by this or by that.

Jack Nicholson is a textbook actor who's very intuitive. He is absolutely brilliant at going as far as you can go, always pushing to the edge, but still making it seem real.

I think that if you get too close to the character, if you do too much historical research, you may find yourself defending your view of a character against the author's view, and I think that's terribly dangerous.

Don't go around asking the question, 'Is this character likeable?' and expect that to be compatible with serious literary endeavours. That's not what it's about.

There is an art to acting, and there are techniques that are acquired. You can be as emotional as you'd like, as a person, but figuring out ways that you can bring specific emotions at specific times and have them be true, and relating to someone as someone that they're not, is a lot.

Sometimes you read things that people don't even notice in a performance, that you just are moved by or understand that this actor is really living his or her life on the screen. The first time I realized that was when I watched Brando in 'On the Waterfront.'

Faulkner was the first novelist I read with pen and paper in hand because his technique stunned me.

I don't believe in overcooking the actors too much. Especially when it's a real performance that I'm looking for.

When I act, I try to understand the character, why she's behaving like that.

Everyone has a different interpretation of characters we know and love from Shakespeare, from 'Miller'. There's specific things about them that are written that are kind of the fingerprints of the first person who played that role, and so I like to think of it as a road map.

I like method actors who don't focus on the glamorous side, but on realistic acting.

Actors that don't look like they're acting and stories that are told well inspire me.

I learn the techniques and then take what I need. I have the Essie Davis technique of acting. I'm an instinctive actress.

With comedy, I've always had a pretty good sense of what I like and how to execute it well, but drama has its own rules.

Whenever I approach any character, I try to find examples to draw upon.

When you see bad acting, that's usually what it is - they're not listening to the other characters. It's always hard with first-time actors to get them in that moment where they are really listening to the other characters and reacting to the other characters.

As an actor, you have to find reasons why your character made her decisions, and you have to empathise with her.

Sometimes I feel like my normal approach to roles has been, 'I want to be more complex, dynamic.'

The only direction I can give to an actor, a good actor who knows his skills, is, 'Here are those words. They're yours. Make them yours. Don't tell the text but be the text.' That means you have to be the emotion of the text.