Pierre Niney Quotes

I take my time to get into the mindset of the character and say my lines. I really have to be the person that I am playing.

If I get the walk of a character, that helps me find them. So I'm constantly looking at airports and train stations, registering walks.

I'm a Method actor. I spent years training for the drinking and carousing I had to do in this film.

I find that I kind of have to sink into the character.

Some of the best actors in the world are very exterior actors, Anthony Hopkins being one of them. He knows exactly how to turn his face to get a certain expression. He knows exactly what to do with eyes, and with his voice. It's very exterior.

I guess I'm probably a Method actor; I don't know... I just think of it as staying in the zone.

What I find sometimes that is tricky is if actors are using too much of their own life in a picture, in a scene, they get locked into a particular way to play the scene, and it lacks an immediacy.

I do whatever I need to do to get into character. Sometimes it's being incredibly quiet, and sometimes it's being loose and goofy.

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.

Acting is kind of difficult to intellectualize - it's a far more visceral experience. It's really hard to be able to think about and then employ these kind of esoteric notions of this person's backstory and try to weave it in somehow. It's just kind of impossible.

I'm a physical actor in that I start with a physical sketch of the character. I find it easier to find inspiration from the outside in. If I find the character's tensions and the way he carries himself or looks, that's going to affect how I talk. So that's how I start to create that person.

Unless it's a specific accent, or something about physicality you have to change, I am generally not such a conscious actor.

I'm not a booky actor, I don't go away and do loads of reading up on a part, generally. I'm more interested in what the people we're portraying do physically, and looking at their sentence construction.

A different script calls for different things. It always takes me a long time to get to know the part, and know the logic behind the words. I have to be with the script for quite a long time before things start to fall into place, before they become part of the character.

I'm a very physical actor; everything I do is pretty much body-oriented. I sometimes am able to deliver information just with a look; my face does two or three different things, and it says it all.

Each action of the actor on the stage should be the visible concomitant of his thoughts.

I really think that effective acting has to do literally with the movement of molecules.

I tell you, I've always been quite physical about acting. I've always felt about for the shape of someone or the deportment, for better or worse. Sometimes I think I've done it disastrously, and other times, when I'm not thinking about it so much, less disastrously, but I can't seem to control it much.

Some actors can create characters and leave them at 'Cut!', but I work the opposite way and drag them out of me. For me, it's about fixing your fabric to fit the role.

I tend to - every time I step onto the set until the time I go back to the hotel, I just try to be in character all the time.

Acting is very physical, even when it doesn't appear to be. It's about the arc of your body's language through a film.

You've got to bring yourself to any character you do.

When I'm trying to find my way into a character, the voice and physicality are the first two things I do.

For better or worse, I don't necessarily categorize myself as a method actor; I'm not going to make claims that I stayed in character 24/7.

As an actor, I know it is my job to shape myself for a role - any role.