Ming-Na Wen Quotes

As actors we're always trying to use our creative imagination.

I've been in front of the camera a million times as a musician, and even directed a few music videos. So, I know a lot about spacing, focus, blocking, etcetera. So, acting isn't totally new for me. Still, I find it fascinating, because you actually get to be another person.

Acting is something different to everybody. I just know that if you watch an actor or actress getting better and better, I think that's them just understanding themselves better and better.

That's my way in the very beginning - how to enter it [a role]. Very quickly in the process, I don't think about voice being separate from the way you hold your head or the way you sit or the way you put on lipstick. It's all a piece of a person, and it's all driven by conviction.

I'm really excited to act again because when I started out, there was an innocent sort of perception of the world that was coming though me, and I think now through a lot of experience and life and understanding, I've come full circle to having a purer response to things. So my craft will be really interesting to work from this place because I think acting is about being in tune with yourself - or maybe the struggle to be in tune with yourself.

As an actor the best thing you have is your imagination. You're not going to have all the experiences, but you draw on the things that you know. So I think you definitely use the things that you're familiar with to your advantage.

For me as an actor, I use a lot of music. Music is a huge part of developing and getting into a certain mindset.

I like to think of myself as an actress, I think of going through all of the films as my kind of film academy, the way that I've learnt.

How you prepare for a role is entirely your business in my point of view. There is little enough mystery anymore left in the world in the part of our profession, which should be clouded in mystery because it isn't in the public. You don't want the magician to show his tricks or how he did them do you? So I do think that is a very private thing that we actors should protect ourselves from.

As an actor, you're used to putting on characters, taking them off, becoming someone else, doing your research, and working on that.

Most of actor's work is done at home, in your hotel room, in the wee hours of the morning thinking and reading and feeling, walking around and listening to music. It really just because an internal exercise, whatever skills. It's great if you have to learn something new for a gig and designing a character physically is always fun but it does become an internal exercise in separating the wheat from the chaff.

I know people think that acting is not quite the occupation of grown-ups, but it is actually the ultimate learning process: You get a multitude of experiences, all for the price of one life.

Ah, nuts. I'm an actor. I just do what comes naturally.

You spend your life training to be an actor, observing people's characteristics so that you can design characters around what you've seen.

I can't really attribute my success onscreen to any formula and suggest you "do this or that" to make it as an actor.

I love actors, and I'm passionate about the creative process of acting and filmmaking.

I would like to go on that path of evolving into a better actor.

I'm not a method actor. I can't even explain so much what I do.

As an actor, I think every moment in your life is giving you a new set of tools. You’re constantly absorbing new information that you can put back onto the screen.

I think I'm a better actor now. I mean, I really think I know a lot about acting now. But I didn't know a lot about acting then, in 80's, and I never knew how to be myself. I never knew how to relax and just play it from me. I was always trying to deliver a line.

I was trained to be an actor, not a star.

I'm fascinated with actors, and I've never quite understood the process.

I do certain things that, maybe, nobody else knows why I'm doing. But it's all - it all has to do with - to grow as an actor.

I had to focus and create a character in Bagger Vance, not just do my 'Will Smith' thing and get paid.

I don't really prepare for each role the same way.