Keira Knightley Quotes

If I'm playing a real-life person, I would take notes, I think that's important. For instance, when I played Rosemary Clooney, I was lucky enough to meet her; thankfully, she was still with us. And I talked with her and read her book, so when it's a real person, I want to find out everything I can.

I do as much research as is physically possible when I'm playing a real person, be they alive or dead.

It's obvious that if you're going to play a character you need to amass information about that person and about their environment or their era that they're in and use as little or as much as necessary.

When you are playing somebody who did exist, and there is good source material on them, whether it is a biography or archives or experts, you would be stupid not to delve into them. But there is a point in the process where you leave the books alone, and instead, you focus on the script and creating your version.

One of the joys about acting is researching.

Part of the fun of acting is the research, finding out about other people.

Acting is a question of absorbing other people's personalities and adding some of your own experience.

When you're portraying someone that really existed, there has to be a time as an actress where you leave reality and move into the fantasy world so you can do your job of creating a character.

Ellis Peters's historical detail is very accurate and very minute, and therefore is not only interesting to read but good for an actor to acquire a sense of the period. And the other thing I think is that an actor lives in the land of imagination.

Actors look at life in a different way. When I meet people, I know that one day I may portray that person or someone like them. It may be a cop or a homeless guy. It helps you to pay more attention to people. Everyone I meet, I retain something from them, something from their personality. It helps me to portray realism in my work.

I'd like to play with a period piece. Playing a girl next door in 2010 is so different from playing one in 1950, the way you talk, walk, dress, relationships. It's really fun studying all that.

Well, I think it can be quite helpful to be working on a character who actually existed, historically. Of course, you might have material to study and help you create the character.

When I played Robert Howard in 'The Whole Wide World', I was struggling with it. There's this dual thing where you feel real good about being able to play this juicy part, and then there's constant shame: 'Who am I to pretend to know who this guy was? Who am I to represent this guy for people who never knew him?'

The interesting thing about history sometimes. is that you know these people existed, and you knew what jobs they did, but you don't know much about them as people, so you actually have to make them up.

There is no first-hand account of what the Queen was saying or thinking, so my job as an actor is to interpret her circumstances.

If you get too deep into the history, what often happens to a lot of us actors is that we become stilted. We forget that we're reading about something that happened a hundred years ago. If we don't put the human emotion that would naturally be in there, we end up being stilted instead of being human beings.

I like as much time as I can get and I'll do whatever I think is helpful to prepare for a role. Sometimes it's practical research, meaning if I had to write shorthand, I'd learn how to write shorthand. Or if I have to know how to dance a certain way, I would learn that. And then there's just research of talking to people similar to the characters I'm playing. And there's stuff that I just feel is inspiring, whether it be music or a painting or a photograph. I've used a lot of Nan Goldin's photos in the past to inspire me. I use certain paintings and pieces of music.

As an actor, you're used to putting on characters, taking them off, becoming someone else, doing your research, and working on that.

I'm not an actor who approaches films doing a lot of research. I do zero research, unless it's a film where I'm playing a mock version of someone who already existed. Then, you've got to do a lot of research.

When it's a bigger character, and there's a lot going on for her, and there are all these different elements that go into the character, I just love being able to dive into it.

I don't know how to play a character unless I love him.

It's interesting what happens when you take on a role, I think. What happens to me - without sounding too spiritual or too hippy, I guess - what happens, most of the time, you do a lot of research, and you get into the character, and at a certain moment, it's like the character takes over.

My brother Ryan was on the Disney XD show 'Pair of Kings' where he played Lanny, the evil cousin to twin kings, for three seasons. His motivation to be a better actor always pushes me to work harder and try to be more like him. When he gets a role, he will study that character until he becomes that person.

When you get a character that you're just starting to work on, it's the most exciting and most terrifying feeling because you have endless hours of diving in, researching, reading, and decision-making.

Acting is about portraying something... that dedication or learning the script of it is really important in really getting to know a topic.