Benedict Cumberbatch Quotes

I've always had a process that I do before I even get to set or go to the location. I work privately, and it almost feels like therapy between me and who I'm playing. So I have this inner life that's there and it gives me a confidence, too, that when I'm playing the role I know every question.

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

Denzel's quality, I think, is his faith. You have all the action in your head and you have to believe in it and just do it. That's what he does and that's what he taught me to do.

I love actors, and I love the casting process. It's funny, like, some writers don't like actors because, I think, they are the faces of the show, and so you feel sort of secondary, but I love actors because they elevate the material; they make it better.

I never don't know my lines. I never take the audition pages into the room. I end up relying on them or looking at them too much, and it makes me feel unprepared, so I always learn my lines without fail.

I hate to go into games thinking about goals.

I've tried to shut myself off as much as possible from the hype of 'War Horse,' and just thought, 'OK, I'm going to focus on the character and focus on the story and focus on what I have to do.'

Actors have their own processes, and if you want to be respectful of their process, you've got to communicate with them in the language of their process, and keeping that all straight is a little bit of a head-scratcher.

In order to make Alma innocent and open, I had to forget that I'm stressed as an actress because I'm making a film with Paul Thomas Anderson. I had to let go of everything and hold onto the text. The language was like a rope I could cling onto and make my way blindfolded through the shooting.

I love to choose the right actors. It's kind of a pleasure to work with them and watch them imbue your concepts that you write.

People rise and fall to meet your level of expectations for them. If you express skepticism and doubt in others, they will return your lack of confidence with mediocrity. But if you believe in them and expect them to do well, they will go the extra mile trying to do their best.

He always believed that people live up or down to the amount of trust you put in them.

To me, acting is a matter of absolute concentration. You can laugh and giggle with your friends up to the minute the director says, "Action!" Then you snap your mind into shape and into the character that you're playing and relate to the people that you're acting with and forget everybody else that you've been joking with.

The one thing I have found about Hollywood is it's a town full of people who believe in themselves, often to a degree where they're what you would call "delusional."

If you don't believe you can make every putt, why bother trying?

Believe me, there is a ton of stuff we shot on Superbad that was unusable, because people were just riffing and riffing. It's just part of the Judd Apatow method, and part of the technique is to also be able to rewrite the movie again in the editing room.

I beat myself up in the studio because I know that a lot of people are expecting me to fail.

Sometimes people - especially people over 40 - underestimate what they really are capable of. They believe they're not capable of doing something great. I tell people who are over 40, "I don't want your best. I want better than that. I want better than what you perceive your best is."

One of the problems we have as writers is we don't take ourselves seriously while writing; being serious is setting aside a time and saying if it comes, good; if it doesn't come, good, I'll just sit here.

If you believe that there's a being superior to yourself and that will guide you, strengthen you that helps a lot but, you know, you just have to stay the course. You just got to stay in there. You cannot be waffling or taking a poll to see what people think. You have to do what you think is right.

I like to make sure that I'm believable. If I don't believe me, then there's a lot of people that don't believe me, but if I can believe that I'm doing it, then I know the audience will, too.

One of the worst things anybody can do is assume. I think fools assume. If people have really got it together, they never assume anything. They believe, they work hard, and they prepare- but they don't assume.

Advertising agencies come to you and they are great fans, they are great creative people themselves, but they ask you to do something, and you say, "Well, we will, we'll create something together." And it is work. It's like you're doing something and they're saying, "Change this" and "Change that." It's not hard, horrible work, but creatively it's not just freedom.

Whenever I teach writing I tell them to never revise as you go. Finish the first draft. This is my writing advice. I can't do that myself. I'm lying to everybody. I write a paragraph, and then I rewrite that paragraph. I want to feel like I'm standing on firm ground before I move on to the next paragraph. Mentally, I have to do that.

Once you are in that ring things happen that you don't expect. There is nothing you can plan for. At the end of the day, you've just got to go in there and feel the guy's spirit. You've got to listen to him breathe, look into his eyes, feel his power and feel his speed. You can't think too much. It is instinctive. It is on-the-fly. But at the same time I go in there and I think it doesn't matter what this guy does, I'm going to have my way. In whatever situation we end up, I am always going to come out on top. That is the one thing that is the same for every single fight.