Acting Intensity Quotes

De Niro was a hero of mine. And Sean Penn. But I've realized I can't operate at that level of intensity. That's okay for movies. On TV, when you live with horror day in and day out, you have to protect yourself.

I don't call myself a method actor, but the thing is, when you meet Reynolds Woodcock, who is always Reynolds Woodcock, you kind of are Alma, and you kind of become Alma all the time. I think after the first day, Vicky was going, 'Oh gosh.' It was so intense, and I couldn't understand why it was so intense.

A huge part of acting in movies is appetite. You do your best work when you've got a lot of appetite and you really want to embrace something. When you get tired, you don't have that hunger.

Even though I'm an actor, I've gone to productions where there has been someone whose work is known in film, and you can't take your eyes off them. It unbalances the production. Whether they're good or not, it doesn't matter.

I'm always 100% committed to a character, a story and a director, and with Michael Mann it was 1,000%. I don't know how to explain this.

If it's a very emotional scene, you're kind of relieved when you've done it, kind of spent. And there are times when you can be rattled, certain characters if they're hyper, that can carry over, the residue of that. But I try to leave it on the set.

In the ring, you want every one of the 80,000 people in the building to know what you're feeling. On a movie set, every expression you make is going to get picked up times 10. They kept having to dial me back.

I think people have a misinterpretation of Method acting, because Method acting is a wonderful thing. The thing is, if you take it too seriously, it's like religion. You start to think it's the truth. But it's not the truth. It's just a way to get somewhere.

There are times when you do a play when you are living in the character over a two-and-a-half-hour period or longer, and you come to the end of the night, and you can feel like you were hit by a truck.

I love playing serious! That's a relief for me. It means something. It sounds dead corny and cheesy, but on a day-to-day basis, you can't just let loose and cry. So as an actress playing those gritty roles, I can play it quite decently.

I grind my teeth and keep my thumbs in so tight that I've dislocated them, just not to scream. Sometimes as an actor one is lucky enough to be asked to scream.

It's not a pleasure torturing actors, although some of them enjoy it.

I got knockback after knockback at auditions. Just before ‘Mulholland Dr.’ my agent told me I was so intense I was freaking people out. She told me I was a brilliant actor but the feedback was that I made people feel uncomfortable because I was so nervous and intense. I just sat there and blubbed. My mum was staying in LA at the time and I went to her and said: ‘I just can’t do this. I’m not cut out for it.’ She just said: ‘Don’t believe a word people say about you. Forget them.’

'Freaky Ali' may look like an easy role to others, but it is not easy.

I think there's a lot of mythos about what's required in acting. The way that actors talk about acting is generally quite punishing, and I think actors want to put forward the idea that they do all of this work because, you know, it's a post-De Niro world, when, largely, in fact, it's almost never true.

I think with the best actors, emotion is something that has no kind of check in them.

I meet Daniel Day-Lewis. He's just sitting in a chair on the set. Now, I had been told that Daniel Day-Lewis was kind of an intense person. And he's really not. He's really THE MOST INTENSE PERSON THAT HAS EVER EXISTED ON THE PLANET OF EARTH. He's not doing anything, he's just sitting in a chair, and I am terrified of him as if a jungle cat has wandered onto the set, like- WHOA! What do we do! Are we supposed to move around a lot or stay perfectly still?! What are the rules of Daniel Day-Lewis?!

I'm no Method actor. I've tried staying in character, and it's just exhausting.

Fight sequence to me isn't just about the athleticism. It so often is about what the emotion that is behind it and how willing you are to really, really challenge that emotion or really take that emotion to that place so you're feeling a certain intensity for the whole time when you're shooting the actual physical scenes.

The way that actors talk about acting is generally quite punishing, and I think actors want to put forward the idea that they do all of this work because, you know, it's a post-De Niro world, when, largely, in fact, it's almost never true.

I can tell stories to other actors about the level of aggression on stage in the '70s between actors - it was unbelievable.

I do my independent stuff where it's real acting if you like. Intense, drama stuff. I love me actions.

I like playing really super-intense, live-in-the-moment characters. It asks me to not phone it in. It's impossible to phone it in. Every American boy has spent his childhood pretending to get shot.

Usually in a battle sequence when a bomb is going off, you forget you're acting.

If you give anything less than 120% as an actor then you end up looking uncomfortable.