Acting Intuition Quotes

From an acting standpoint, you've got to continue to trust your gut because, ultimately, only that will result in a better product, making the audience more happy and resulting in the right payoff.

Something just happens when you read a part. You know, if you'd like to do it or if you don't believe it.

What I've learned about acting is that it needs to be mysterious. If you overthink how a beat needs to be played, it can trip you up.

Acting isn't something you do. Instead of doing it, it occurs. If you're going to start with logic, you might as well give up. You can have conscious preparation, but you have unconscious results.

I don't think I”m a very good actor. Everything is very tentative and at a certain point you click in and just feel the spirit move you. I can be possessed really well.

A lot of acting, and I believe this, is either you can do it or you can't.

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.

It doesn't matter what you feel - ultimately, it's what the audience feels. You can finish a scene and think to yourself, 'Oh, God. I was so deep in that moment,' and find it just didn't play. I don't know if I have very good radar about that or not.

That's what sets apart one actor from another, and that you can't teach. You can't give someone that. When you're working, putting a character together, or in a scene, that's where things will happen that you have to have the intuition to notice them, and to register them.

I think Nat's an amazing actor... He understands things about acting that most people don't.

You know those actors who have a sense for how they should be used? I don't think I have that.

From an actor's point of view, if you are watching something, and you see improv, you know it. Because of your experience, you just bloody know that wasn't written.

I am not much of a trained actor. I have to get my brain and heart to go deep inside the situation, and then, probably, I can start acting. It takes me a little while to get out of it.

My acting has got to be natural. I didn't go to any drama schools. It's a gift from God.

I don't really overthink my characters. The camera comes on, and I am on.

As an actor, I know immediately if I'm saying a word that doesn't feel right coming out of my mouth, and I know how to change it. But as a director watching something, or even as a writer reading a script, sometimes it's not always clear what needs to be fixed.

I don't think you can be a good actor and want to please, because so much about performing and acting is surprising people.

I don't think talent or an instinct for acting is something you can teach.

It was a sort of organic thing. I never went, 'I must be an actress.' I thought, 'I think I could do this. I think I could be good at this.' I would just get sort of hungry when I read something I thought I can do well, whether it was in books or in scripts or if I saw a certain movie. It sort of happened quite naturally.

In your actor's heart, you know when you're playing well. Others may not always agree with you, but I'm always aware of when the scene is cooking or not. You have an instinct about that from years of doing scenes and plays, and I think it stands you in good stead even in the TV world.

I find that the acting's getting easier - with experience, everything is more instinctual.

There's a lot of directors who were actors, so they have the sensibility of an actor, which sometimes helps.

I found that the more I'd done Shakespeare, and the more I trusted my instincts and applied the same rules you would apply to any scene, the closer I got to how it's meant to be acted.

All the theories that acting is reacting to imaginary circumstances as though they are real, and directing is turning psychology into behavior, those are all stabs at something that can't be taught. All the great actors can't talk about what they do, and they don't want to begin to talk about it. They just do it.

I've always felt that actors in my experience have a very good and accurate instinct about whether something feels right or not. They just have a sense because they have to literally do it.