Jessica Chastain Quotes

Listen, acting is not surgery, it's entertainment. You're doing something to hopefully move people, to make them laugh, to transport them. But actors are vulnerable, and the reason we're vulnerable is that we're always trying to recreate human behaviour.

I'm not a pyrotechnical director; I'm not good with all those innovative things. What I am interested in is how actors can touch the heads and hearts of an audience.

I love doing theater so much - being in front of an audience and seeing how a character grows and develops with every performance.

'Brooklyn's Finest,' this is the kind of movie that's why I want to be an actor, to tell real-life stories. This is where I feel my job is, to interpret life.

Actors have to make you believe that it's happening for the first time and all that jazz and make it human and at the same time entertain you.

As an actor, what you dream of is being able to portray people that people empathize with and understand and really feel for.

I like making people feel things. Acting doesn't seem like lying but like storytelling.

If you're good enough to play a role with emotion and universal human elements, then you'll get others coming to you.

Real acting is about giving people an insight into a person, letting the audience in.

I wish to continue to essay roles that will help me find my place in the audience's hearts.

You can watch someone on-stage cry and cry - but in the audience you feel nothing. It's easy to become indulgent. For me, what's important is the story first.

Acting and singing are actually very similar because they're both telling a story.

That's why I enjoy acting: getting in the mind of someone else.

I just love to be able to actually build a character.

I think you ultimately have to love who you're playing. You have to have that kind of feeling. You have to have passion for the person.

In terms of the characters I think are really fun to play, a lot of times it's someone in my head saying 'I know that woman.'

That's what acting is. You're pretending to be someone else.

I usually don't find myself reacting to my characters. I just create them ... And let the audience decide whether they're empathetic or scared or compelled to cheer me on.

Feelings are universal, and if an actor's doing his job, I think he's making people sit there, and if it's in a movie or a theatre, going 'Hmm, yeah, I know that... I know that.'

Theater has to resonate in your heart in a way that movies don't.

Acting isn't necessarily pretending. It's storytelling. It's giving someone your perspective on something.

I think actors always retain one foot in the cradle. We're switched on to our youth, to our childhood. We have to be because we're in the business of transferring emotions to other people.

I like reading novels because it provides insight into human behavior. I am really interested in feelings and think they are what define us as a species. When you really get it right in acting, it's an act of empathy. You feel less distant from others, and that is really exciting.

My approach as an actor has always been the same, in that the greatest gift that you're ever going to have is your imagination because you're not going to have all life experiences. So you draw on things that are sort of close to it but you spend your time expanding on it or drawing something specific on whatever your situation is.

I don't like the idea the viewer can kind of sit there and go, 'Make me like this person.' People aren't inherently sympathetic.