Lisa Edelstein Quotes

I demanded two weeks of rehearsal because to me as an actor, that's the most important time.

Making a film of a work you've played for six weeks gives you intimate knowledge of the character. By the time you go in front of the camera you've worked out the behavior and life of a character.

I guess once you've been acting for a long time, you glean the great bits of good directors and the bad bits from other directors, and you know the way that you would like to be directed.

Well, it was very interesting to play a character and stretch it over such a long time - 12 episodes. I had never done a TV show before, so week to week it was unclear what we would be asked to do.

Acting has always been something I've wanted to get into. I think the best models are actors; you're taking on a character. In that sense, I have been acting for a long time. It didn't seem like a crazy transition.

I enjoy working on a series and having a long stretch of time to get to know and connect with my cast and crew. It also gives me the ability to play a character over the span of countless hours of television.

I think if you're a competent actor with a good imagination, and if it's on the page, it makes your job a lot easier.

Not all television scripts are created equal. And the process is ridiculous. They send you a script and want you in the next morning. That's not how acting works. You can do anything to me as an actor; I'm a very resilient guy. Just don't rush me. If you ask me to do it immediately with no time to prepare, I know you have contempt for actors.

You know, it's scary when you sign onto a pilot of a series because, as much as you want the series to go, you also want it to be a character that you'd be interested in playing for a long time.

I've done films where we don't rehearse, and I've done films where we heavily rehearse. I like rehearsals.

I've been offered a couple of shows that have been very successful, but they weren't right for me. It has to be something I could be excited about for a long time.

And being away and not performing for a long time and really connecting with my audience for a long time, I have a great responsibility to myself and to them to do it exactly the way the process was when I was young.

There's something really amazing about watching an actor like Michael C. Hall or Jennifer Carpenter, who are completely professional and do everything so brilliantly, but yet can have a really great time on set.

Especially when you play a character for so many years, the character ends up reflecting a lot of who you are and I think I've changed a lot since then, but that represented a lot of who I was as a teenager.

I've never worked on a lawyer show for a long time, but I imagine the actors all start acting like lawyers.

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.

I was watching the last season of 'Mad Men,' and they're now so in their characters and they're so comfortable in their characters, and they're doing such good work. That can only happen from doing it over and over, and developing a character over seven years.

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 find that the acting's getting easier - with experience, everything is more instinctual.

Being on television, playing the same character for many years, for me, I think that would get a little tedious.

When you do 'Mad Fat Diary' or 'The Village,' you always learn about the particular time period, and that's always nice for an actor.

I've done a few costume dramas, and people say, 'What was it like wearing the costumes? Did they really help you with your character?,' and most of the time it doesn't make any difference. You're wearing something a bit weird, and it's sort of uncomfortable, but it doesn't really have a huge impact on the part that you're playing.

I like to rehearse with the actors scenes that are not in the script and will not be in the film because what we're really doing is trying to establish their character, and good acting to me is about reacting.

You spend so much time developing a character when you do a film; so much of your work is done before you get set to shoot because you've been working on the character: the way he walks, the way he talks, what might upset him, what might make him happy.

For a long time I did not want to do television because I did not want to get stuck playing the same person. I wanted the ongoing challenge of a variety of roles.