Acting Approach Quotes

There are some similarities, I think, with all the characters I play. I'm not a guy who sees the desire to transform with each part; I'm not a piece of clay.

My James Bond wasn't any different to my Saint or my Persuaders or anything else I've done. I've just made everything that I play look like me and sound like me.

A while ago, I did a television adaptation of 'Bleak House,' and the character I played, as far as I was concerned, had no redeeming features whatsoever. I wasn't about to try to find any; I didn't need to.

I feel I should never do passive characters. They don't work for me.

Even when I'm playing a lawyer or a doctor, I want to play a person. A human being.

I would say that the woman's ability to multi-task and to be maternal in instinct, it fosters a different approach to the character that makes sense as an actor.

When I'm on an adult set and I'm in a scene, I am myself. I'm not acting. I am playing to the camera, definitely, but I am myself.

I'm a task-oriented actor. A pretender. And I try to invent my process anew each time I make a new project. So I frown on any method.

I don't like to intellectualize about my acting. I don't sit around and study the pages of a script over and over again.

The way I approach acting when there's a real life character, it's sort of like a Venn diagram. What I come up with is some amalgam of the two of us.

I don't personally look to my own life experiences for answers about how to play a scene.

I saw several actresses play the part. I did not in fact, as far as I know, do anything that any of the other actresses did. I don't think actresses do that. I think that what we do is we see a role as a role, we don't see it as a person. We look at the role and think, 'What can I, as an actor, bring to that part?

Mom's a writer, so I grew up reading scripts and I have a real respect for them and I know how much thought goes into creating a role, so I'm always interested to find out what was the thought process of the writer and how best can I convey it rather than trying to change it to suit myself.

As a matter of principle, I always come to a film like a blank slate, I don't learn my lines in advance. With this approach, I feel clean.

I realise that certain actors project their own image onto the screen - those who are the same on as they are off. But I've never had the necessary statistics to be able to do that sort of thing, and so, anyway, I always wanted to be a character actor.

My approach to the work is the same, whether I had the lead or a supporting role. I consider myself a character actor in the true sense of the word. Unless I'm doing my autobiography, I'm playing a character.

Every movie is different. Sometimes with movies, there are roles you should just leave alone and relax with and keep it light. And there are other ones where you want to work with an acting coach and really delve in there.

I have a tendency as an actress in general to ground my characters. Even when doing outlandish characters, that's my instinct.

I try to make all of my roles likeable in some way.

I never even think about the physicality of roles, until honestly I get the gig and I think, 'OK, now what do I have to do in this one?' Like, I approach it thinking more about the character - do I respond to it? Is it something I think I can play? Does it seem like it'll be fun?

As an actor, you can't say, "I'm going to try to be cool at all cost when I do this," because that's the opposite of what you need to do as an actor.

When you're doing an out-and-out comedy, the notion of preparing for a character - I hope I don't reveal too much of myself here - but, uh, no, I'm not doing anything.

Natalie Portman's approach to acting demands that she wears her heart on her sleeve so explicitly, the heart becomes the whole garment - a crimson chemise with streaks of blue veins running across it.

Well every moment, every project is different. I took a very slow approach to acting, trying to really work with people I could learn from. And I got something different out of each experience.

I'm not a trained actor. I have neither read acting books nor gone to acting school. But I have certain fundamentals on how I approach a character; the basic skeleton of my preparation is based on observations from real life.