Mary Elizabeth Winstead Quotes

As an actor, I look at first what I can borrow from what I really feel.

To be a character who feels a deep emotion, one must go into the memory's vault and mix in a sad memory from one's own life.

I think people pick up on that. You use personal stuff and mix it all in - I definitely pull on that stuff in my acting.

As an actor you bring some of your own experiences which can make things easier. You build off of it, but your imagination is always the best thing you have as far as creating things I think specifically for what that character is going through. But you're definitely drawing obviously upon things that you can connect to, and then you kind of mold the change that you're making into something that's right for the character.

The ideal way to approach a character is to find something in yourself that relates in some way.

Good acting comes from finding the essence of a character.

As an actor, you always want to find a piece of who you are in every role you take on.

When you take on a role, even if the character is somebody that you are dissimilar to, you have to identify with the role and look for an emotional connection even if there is not a biographical one.

Obviously an actor draws on his own experience.

For me, acting comes straight from the heart. In that sense I don't act at all. I think that to feel the character's pain I have to be myself. Somewhere audiences see that.

The way I write my songs is that I have to believe what I'm writing about, and that's why they always end up being so personal - because the kind of artists I like, they convince me, they totally win me over straight away in that thing. Like, 'Oh my God, this song is totally about me.'

I think it's always easier to play parts that you have something concrete that you can relate to.

When you're watching a movie and find yourself getting emotional, it's because you're bringing something personal to the images. It's the same thing with acting. You're bringing the essence of your core emotional being to that moment.

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

As an actor, you can't just imitate someone. You have to get under her skin.

You can't understand a character intellectually, you have to become one with its emotional core.

Any actor would love to just pick up a script and be like, 'I can connect to this person, and I can see myself playing him.'

There are elements of myself in every character I do, just because you take from your real life experiences and sprinkle those into your character.

Every single character I've ever played has a little bit of me in them just because every single human in the world has a little bit of everything in them.

As an actor, you go in your own personal life and pull from your personal life, so that's what I do.

I never do roles, I play people.

I believe in the fact that to portray a character convincingly, you need to live that character, own that character. You have to be earnest with every line that you deliver. However, it doesn't mean that you have to cut off your true self.

As an actor, you use the things from yourself that you can apply to the character.

That's what acting is all about - it's all about bringing truth from your own life, and putting it into your characters. If you have the advantage of using your own life in your work, that's always the way to go.

When somebody is talking to you about something terrible on set with lines, and you believe what he says, sometimes it gives a strange vibe, because you wonder when that person is talking if he's talking about something that really happened to him and he's using the character.