Instinctive Performance Quotes

I don't like to intellectualize about my acting. I don't sit around and study the pages of a script over and over again.

I played a lot of sports and it's the plays in basketball that weren't worked out that are the ones that are just fantastic that you remember. We don't know the power that's within our own bodies.

I never went to school for acting; it just comes to me. I never practice. I read the script, I'll memorize it. I don't even practice the acting. I'll just do it the day, and it will just come to me.

I was working more on a primal, instinctive level. And it just seemed to suit me; it seemed to suit my concentration span, it seemed to suit my personal style of performance, and I have fallen in love with film acting.

I actually prefer it if I don't know what I'm supposed to do. If you've got an equal temperament piano keyboard, then you know what you're going to get if you play certain chords. But I actually like it if you don't know where the notes are, because then you do it intuitively. You're working out a new language, basically. New rules.

I'm not a cerebral player. When I'm out on the floor, I try to play.

I think I was programmed to do good things when I came into the majors. I knew how to play.

I never took a music lesson in my life, it just came naturally.

Meryl Streep's brilliant, just brilliant. I've been fortunate to do two movies with Meryl. And for an actor to go moment to moment like she does, there's no one better. And she dances between moments. Each take is different because she's riding instincts, she's riding impulses. And she trusts that.

I think good actors are born with a kind of native gift. When you study too much with an acting teacher, that gets taken away. You lose your sense of spontaneity.

A lot of times, the spectacular play the fans see is not always what I tried to do. It just happens.

It's always best not to be thinking a hell of a lot while you're acting, because you want it to be as spontaneous as possible, not too intellectual. Just behaving and listening to other people who you're doing scenes with. I always like the latter when it looks easy, even though it may not be.

I'm a spontaneous actress, not a studied one.

I can get onstage and cut that off and be superinstinctive. To be a good live performer, you have to be instinctive. It's like, to walk in the jungle, or to do anything where there's a certain tightrope wire aspect you need to be instinctive. And you have to be comfortable at it also.

[As an actor] I have ideas, but things should always be fluid. You should always be ready to follow an instinct. Something might reveal itself on the day.

Great actors can transform, but sometimes there's just this person who speaks right to the role. When they walk in the room, you know they're that character. That is something you can't teach an actor; that's something that's luck and chance.

Acting isn't something that I think about very consciously, somehow that just doesn't work for me. I just kind of feel my way into it.

I think the best way to become a character is by osmosis as opposed to thinking directly about stuff.

Some plays just come out of me, just on instincts. I'll make a play and wonder, How did I do that?

I don't know if I do anything to get into character: I just go with my gut.

Because I was able to submerge myself into the character, I didn't have to go back and forth. You don't have to work hard to bring emotions. It all just comes naturally, you're there living it.

It's been that way since the beginning. I just been playin, I aint even notice I was winnin.

Sometimes with a comedy it's just having the instinct of how real you play it and what level you want it.

Actors should be instinctive and spontaneous. If you think about acting, you're not going to be good.

I don't really have a process. I'm very much an in-the-moment actress. I suppose I just kind of wing it because I feel that as long as I know my character, I should be able to be spontaneous on set.