Helena Christensen Quotes

One of my favorite things to do is not to speak on screen. In theater it's different because there's a lot of emphasis on language - it's a different medium. But that is one of the most wonderful things about film. A person's face can say so much more than their voice can.

Modeling is really silent acting.

In silence and movement you can show the reflection of people.

Body language is essential for an actress, even if you don't use your body in an athletic way. Just to be free, to use it like your voice. A body can be small and have incredible violence. A body talks.

A shoe is not only a design, but it's a part of your body language, the way you walk. The way you're going to move is quite dictated by your shoes.

I think you can actually express a lot more in ways without words.

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.

Sexuality is primarily a means of communicating with other people, a way of talking to them, of expressing our feelings about ourselves and them. It is essentially a language, a body language, in which one can express gentleness and affection, anger and resentment, superiority and dependence far more succinctly than would be possible verbally, where expressions are unavoidably abstract and often clumsy.

You have to learn to express differently. Whenever I do TV or film, I ask if I can see the shot to see, to see if it's full body or a close-up. That helps me understand how to communicate.

When articulation is impossible, gesticulation comes to the rescue.

It is really hard to completely re-learn how to express yourself without using words. When you take away speech, you have to re-invent the way you express yourself. You have to exaggerate your body language and your facial expressions.

In dance you use every party of your body except your voice. I wanted to start acting because I wanted to use my voice.

When you're acting, you're a person. When you're modeling, you're a hanger.

For me, purity of movement wasn't enough. I needed expression, more intensity, more mind.

The body says what words cannot.

I discovered that silent film is almost an advantage. You just have to think of the feeling for it to show. No lines pollute it. It doesn't take much - a gaze, an eyelash flutter - for the emotion to be vivid.

The most important thing in the face is the eyes, and if you can make the eyes talk, you're halfway there.

I have always loved contemporary dance, but it has always been a bit of a mystery to me. But choreography is very much like what I do when you are putting characters in frame on the page. It's so impressive what they do with their bodies. It's like painting: an abstraction.

I like to use my hands. When I was in theatre in college, that was one of my biggest notes: 'You use your hands too much.'

A lot can be said with just a look, or the way the body moves. Each song is a different character. So each song takes on a different movement of the body. And the body has to go with the subject and the attitude that you have toward that subject.

When the music is physically demanding, I want to make sure that the effort involved is put across to the audience through physical gesture.

This is the problem with language, and this is what makes silent movies fun, because the connection with them, me or the audience is not with the language. There's no question of interpretation of what we are saying it's just about feeling. You create your own story.

I understand why people went nuts for 'The Artist.' We use words so much, it's nice to be able to explore a different way of communication, to be able to express silently what someone - or something - is thinking or feeling.

I speak two languages, Body and English.

I think there's a great deal of information you can convey with looks or silence.