Helena Bonham Carter Quotes

I'm more interested in knowing my cues than my lines. If you know what your cues are, then you know what your reaction is going to be to them. Acting is about reacting, and if I can kind of purely react, that's easier for me.

As an actor, the only pressure I have is to just be truthful and to do my best work.

I would like to portray something that would challenge the actor in me.

As an actor, you think you know your craft, you know the conflicts in your character, but often you don't.

Every actor has to love and loathe the character he plays.

I love an acting challenge, and I love getting to sit down with my script and do all my drama work.

I really don't know what I'm doing... I don't. It's terrible. I go in there and I learn how to be like the character and do the best I can, and that's all I really do.

They did cast me as an ingenue once, and the novelty was nice. But I said, 'There is nothing here to play!' I really like getting into the meat of a role.

Most of my training at graduate school was geared towards drama, so I feel good about it, and I can do it, but it requires a lot more work from me. I feel like with drama... well, with all acting, really, you need to honor the truth of the situation.

You don't become the character.

Your job as an actor is to piece together whatever you've learned in your training, or whatever you have experienced in your life, to piece together a person.

As an actor, your first priority is the work - immersing yourself in the role, backstory, and bringing that to screen.

The most vital thing for an actor to deliver a great performance is to be honest to the role he or she is playing.

As an actor, I'm more interested in characters the longer I have lived with them.

Whenever I read a script, I don't differentiate between a kissing scene or an emotional scene.

The whole process of acting is transformation. What is your power, quality and level of transformation, define you as an actor.

Actresses cannot have any inhibitions while portraying bold characters. It is something that we learn on the first page of the book on acting.

I personally take cues directly from the script, then I like to surprise the other actors. But you must maintain control on a level and see how far you can go up, down or out emotionally. You have to balance the craft with spontaneity.

I feel my job as an actor is to explore all sides of humanity.

Film acting is really the trick of doing moments. You rarely do a take that lasts more than 20 seconds. You really earn your spurs acting onstage. I needed to do that for myself. I would hate to say at the end of everything that I never did a stage play.

So many actors get caught up in their technique, and to be honest, I see it really getting in the way. I see them forcing things. I definitely do my best work when I'm free of that. But I think as an actor, I work really hard in preparing the roles.

Actors put ourselves in awkward positions all the time.

I think that different actors go about their preparation differently, but when it comes to acting, I use my imagination.

With acting, you wanna see if you can get into trouble without knowing how you're gonna get out of it. It's like the exact opposite of war, where you need an exit strategy. When you're acting, you should get all the way into trouble with no exit strategy, and have the cameras rolling.

Once you really understand your role... that's why I think actors get lost in a series. Everybody wants to be the quarterback or the game-winning wide receiver. I've been around long enough and done enough stuff to where I don't feel that way. I just want to do what I do as well as possible.