Nina Arianda Quotes

As an actor, I always like some tension, some distance, between me and the character I'm playing.

I think actors get too comfortable. I like being uncomfortable as an actor because it keeps you alive. I don't know, I think it's important.

The actor cannot afford to look only to his own life for all his material nor pull strictly from his own experience to find his acting choices and feelings.

I do not use any set methods, not even The Method. The character after all is in the lines.

Sometimes I think of movie acting as advanced pretend.

I see all these people talking about acting as a great spiritual thing. It's not. There's no great mystery to acting. It's a very simple thing to do, but you have to work hard at it. It's about asking questions and using your imagination.

I try to steal from the best. Suck it all in. 'Taxi Driver' is really a bible for film actors, a master class. A lot of emotional power, a lot of emotional depth but it's contained and you just see the tip of the iceberg.

I'm an emotional actor. When I'm doing a scene, I really believe it. I live the part as long as I'm in the scene.

An actor is supposed to be a sensitive instrument.

Actors are hard to photograph because they never want to reveal who they are. You don't know if you're getting a character from a Chekhov play or a Polanski film. It depends what mood they're in.

As much as I know people love the method and what you can draw out of yourself, a lot of acting is very imaginative.

I'm an actor. I love to create.

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 live in the energy and rhythm of the character. To some degree, that's true of every actor I've worked with.

As an actor, the only thing you have is your instinct and your imagination.

Acting is different from mental gymnastics. You try to discover as much about the character as you can, but a large area is mysterious.

Sometimes I'm playing somebody that I may have a problem with. Your job as an actor is not to go only play things that make you look good.

I am trained in theatre, and so I take time to study and get into the skin of a character.

One rule which applies to every role is that you have to surrender yourself to the director with an empty slate.

Part of being an actor is being susceptible to imaginary circumstances, so as soon as I'm on the set I feel like I'm actually there.

As an actor, I believe that acting is actually behaving truthfully under imaginary circumstances.

Always when I directed the play, I was always trying to cast people not who were necessarily like the characters, but people who I felt had the essential component that the character had, some kind of soul for it.

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

As a filmmaker I find it much more rewarding to work with actors who are classically trained. It's about the work and only the work.

All good actors are unpredictable, and a little crazy in a good way, because they feel more secure playing other people than themselves.