When I work on a movie, I never aim for records, collections or the number one position. I always concentrate on my work and look for ways to improve my acting abilities. I also advise my co-stars not to concentrate on these pretty issues and just focus on acting.
When I am offered a film, I don't ask whether I will be singing any of the movie's tracks.
I didn't study interviews. I studied acting.
I'm really loving acting. I want this as a career. I'll still write music and collaborate with people, but I'm focused on the acting path.
I actually love working with accents. I don't know, something about it unlocks something in me. It makes me concentrate on getting into character a little more, helps me find a focus.
I like to stay within the zone of one character. It would disturb me to break away and go into an entirely different territory.
I took a break from doing music to concentrate on acting.
My movies are unadorned, they're not particularly fancy, I think they're kind of workmanlike in some ways, focusing on the writing and the acting.
When you're acting, it should be the most important thing that's going on. But when you're not, leave it alone.
I've played historical characters before, and I think the trap of all of them is if you try to do an impression. If that's what you're working on when you're doing a scene, then your focus is on the wrong thing.
I think one of the things that might distinguish me is when I'm going to work as an actor I really try not to worry about my own personal hang-ups and just really concentrate on the work. Because I have such a respect for acting, which is something I feel like I'm constantly learning how to do, that all of my energy is always focused on the acting itself.
Physical comedy and musical theatre were never actually in my main focus at school. I was more of a dramatic actor. I always thought I was better at that.
I studied theater in college, and I really wanted to be an actress and play a lot of different roles. Then I made landing on a television comedy my main focus.
Acting was absolutely my first focus. I graduated high school in L.A., and two weeks afterwards, I moved to New York City, and I got a job in a mail room, and I got an agent, doing what actors do, with head shots and all the rest of it.
You have to remember that for more than half my life - probably until my children were born - acting was everything to me. I was obsessed by it, and I spent so much time just trying to get to the point where I was being paid to do it. Literally, I spent every waking moment thinking about acting.
I'm no Method actor. I've tried staying in character, and it's just exhausting.
I'm a musician - music will never go away - but my focus is acting, and I started late so I have to play catch-up. So that means I have to work twice as hard in this game. But it will never stop, I think I always feel I have to work twice as hard.
When you're acting in a scene, you're focused on doing the scene. You can't break character and go, 'Oh my God, I love what you're doing!'
The journalist in me always loved relating and socialising and connecting with people, but there came a point where I needed to make a decision to stop that being my focus and really focus on acting - an audience are only really going to believe me as a character to an extent if they don't know me as Lily that well.
It was extremely useful to grow up in front of the camera. It gives the camera no significance. I think it helped me have perspective on things. The attraction that Hollywood can have, I feel like I'm over that. Instead I just concentrate on acting.
As an actor... at some point you've got to forget that the crew's there in order to do your job.
As any actor will tell you, the hardest thing to do is small parts, because you focus all your attention and concentration on that small part. When you're playing the lead part, you don't have time to think about the whole of it, so you just have to steam on and get on with it.
That's such a relevant thing, as an actor - committing and not being distracted by any kind of technical awareness, or whatever. You do have to block things out sometimes, and sometimes it's easier than others.
I decided to not be so dismissive of my music in favor of my acting. Acting has been such a consistent thing for me; a lot of times in the past, I wouldn't have had the confidence with my music to really make it a part of my schedule. I would easily push it to the side, or I would easily take up time that was needed for it.
Reading scripts or commercial copy isn't a problem for me, so I can really focus on the acting instead of it being secondary.
