Acting Realism Quotes

It's good for actors to confront those things we have to act: panic, pain and death.

Acting is never done. We're trying to keep it real and make sure that you're entertained and it seems unrehearsed.

I felt that there could be some anger. There could be some frustration that he has the tendency to take over the room, but I wanted all of those things to show in the grays of her hair and the fact that her hips are much wider than they probably were when she met him. I wanted it to show in the fact that her hair is not done up all the time. I wanted it to be a part of that every day that wasn't in your face. Because then for me, that's overacting. To me, that's not "being." I wanted Rose [in "Fences"] to be many things.

I love acting. It is so much more real than life.

I have a really hard time watching my sister act in anything but especially anything where it's a strong emotion. Whether she's crying or she's angry or she's - whatever emotion she's feeling I actually think that she's feeling it and I want to hug her and make it all better.

Never in my short career, I've never had that experience where I wasn't sure if I was acting or if it was real.

There's a way to do an acid trip like Harold & Kumar, and there's a way to be on acid. What I know of acting, Sean Penn actually strapped up to that electric chair in Dead Man Walking. These are the guys that I look up to.

As a young performer, I didn't know that you can have a great time playing someone in terrible crisis. The more you know it's not real, the deeper you can go into it. And the easier it is to let it go when it's done.

I wasn’t getting obliterated, but I was getting a kick. I was very method on that. That’s why I’d have gone along with it [if Tom had hit her]. But Tom was like: ‘Oh my God – I hope you don’t murder me!’

I always did plays, and when I went to NYU - and I didn't go to Tisch, the theater school, because I was like, 'Well, acting's not realistic. You can't make a career out of it.' So I just studied general studies and humanities at NYU, but I was doing plays while I was there. So I was sort of cheating.

Your duty as an actor is to try to make it as real as possible.

Anybody who works with me knows this: I always repeat wardrobe in my characters. We're trying to play real people.

Real acting is realistic no matter what the medium.

When you play a character that's someone real, when you're playing a true story, it's really great 'cause you're not pretending to make up some silly thing.

Real-life people are often the hardest to play, people that you recreate who have actually lived, because you have to live up to people's knowledge of those characters.

I'm kind of hard to double, but I did have one guy for a while as my double. I kind of like to do my own stunts, though, because it's just the overall experience. Sometimes you have to step aside when the stuff gets really dangerous, but I feel like sometimes you have to do your own stunts to make the role seem real.

One reason we lasted so long is that we usually played two people who were very much in love. As we were realistic actors, we became those two people. So we had a divertissement: I had an affair with him, and he with me.

As a director, I have to feel realism from actors, and they can't be plastic.

One thing I hate in movies is when the camera starts circling around the characters. I find that totally fake.

I think any actor should be aware of where they're starting to stretch into what's not truthful.

If a scene isn't honest, it stands out like a sore thumb.

I don't consider myself very brave in any sense. I'm interested in this kind of behavior. My job is to try to make it realistic and emotionally resonant. That's the most challenging thing, to bring emotional resonance to what you do as an actor.

I just invited close friends and family, the usual suspects whose opinion I value but who I know will enjoy the film [Before I Go To Sleep]. I don't know how difficult it is for them to suspend their disbelief because they obviously know me and what they're seeing is not me.

I was a big 'Blue Valentine' fan. I really loved that movie. And I thought the performances were just unbelievably real, which is certainly what I always strive for in my work.

I always thought that if you don't feel the breath in the actors' bodies, you lose all the intimacy and truth.