Actor's Insight Quotes

Actors need to know why they're saying what they're saying, more than just learning their lines.

I never played a woman who was smarter than me.

The protagonists that I've played tend to be people who make trouble. Or even if they don't make it, they certainly disrupt things. It's fun to do that in life as well. But I don't think I ever played myself.

So from an actor's perspective, you really have no idea how you're acting.

Working with Aamir Khan was awesome. There's so much one can learn from him.

I had a moment - and I don't know if it was funny, necessarily, but I realized the effect I could have on people - when I was doing a production of 'The Little Prince,' and I played the snake.

A part of being an actor is I people watch. I like to observe their behaviour, watch their reactions on the street and see how they talk to each other, and that's impossible when they are looking back at you. I used to enjoy taking the train and watching people in their own minds, struggling with themselves.

Not write, maybe develop. Direct, sure. As an actor, you work on so many films, you sort of start to see who directs well and who doesn't.

When I'm playing a bad guy, a lot of it is imagined: things I thought I wanted to do, but I never would do them.

When you look in the eyes of someone and that's what you look into, I knew him with my blood. It's not something you can actually ever get to, I don't think, without that. It was a huge gift, as an actor.

Knowing what thought process goes into constructing a line helps an actor know how to deliver that line because you understand the intention behind the writing.

As an actor, you think you know your craft, you know the conflicts in your character, but often you don't.

It's difficult to judge other actors, because as an actor you're looking at different things than what an audience is looking at.

What helps you as an actor when it comes to roles is that deeper understanding of so many different fractions of humanity. Because oftentimes, even in comedy, there is conflict.

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

The art of acting presupposes three phases: understanding a part, intuiting a part, and contemplating the essence of a part.

The best actors are always the ones who've directed as well, as they understand all the problems you face.

Many times, I like to read the script before I even know who they want me to play, so I can read it and really enjoy it as an audience member. I think that's given me the ability to ferret out the really special scripts from all the rest.

There'll be moments when I'm out in the prison yard, chatting with the cast and the crew, getting ready to shoot a scene. And then I'll remember if I were actually an inmate, I'd only be out there an hour. The other 23 hours of the day, I'd be in my cell. It's kind of a downer.

For me, there are a lot of things you can imagine as an actor, and then there are things that you know in your bones and in your cells once they happen to you.

Alfonso Cuarón, in the rehearsals, without J.K. Rowling's knowledge, told me that [my character] was, in fact, gay. So I'd been playing a part like a gay man for quite a long time. Until it turned out that I indeed got married to Tonks. I changed my whole performance after that. Just saw it as a phase he went through.

But it's interesting being directed by someone who is a very good actor. There's nothing like it. It might sound like a territorial thing about what I do, but I don't think you can understand what it is until you've done it. I know that to be a fact.

The characters I play always seem eerily appropriate to where I am in my personal life at the time, and if they're not, there always tends to be this notion that I should be learning something to apply to my own life from these people.

I didn't drop into the mannerisms of another version of the character, but I guess I was pretty alert to that.

It is always a pleasure to be directed by an actor because they know the scene from the actor's perspective, too. That's an advantage.