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 don't know what the hell I'm doing up there half the time. These performers that go on about their technique and craft - oh, puleeze! How boring! I don't know what technique means. But I do know what experience is. I know in my gut when I've done a scene right.
In a way, I don't create anything; I just open myself to the character, and the character takes over. Of course, I'm aware of it, and I'm driving it, but I don't try to control it. If I try to control it, it goes wrong.
I don't prepare for any role. I go on the sets and do it.
The key to acting is less acting and just reacting.
Acting in something that I'm directing... I'm really enjoying it because, if for no other reason, that particular acting is like reading my mind on every single take. It's kind of efficient, for better or worse.
I'm the sort of actor who doesn't really prep a lot - I don't do a lot of research for parts. I just go for it, and I usually pull through.
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.
In Method acting, you can't have preconceived ideas. You have to live in the moment. You have to keep yourself open.
I typically try not to think too hard about what I'm going to do in a certain scene with a certain actor in a certain moment because I think that kind of lends its way to not being as improvisational and sort of carefree as one would hope.
I don't like to plan. Very often, for me, acting is like loving; it's using the muscle that you use in loving, in that your heart feels open. Physically, you feel open. And so therefore your job is to enter, open, and listen. And see what happens.
I have no acting technique I act instinctively. That's why I can't play any role that isn't based on something in my life.
If I do my very best, then the camera and the audience will follow me, and eventually they will somehow feel like I feel. I don't have to show it to them. I don't have to speak it out loud.
I work with my instincts. I don't have a process that I learned in an acting class whereby I break a script down or whereby I do a certain kind of research.
People call me an instinctive actor. I used to consider that an insult early on, only because I had never studied. Now... I love it.
There's a Zen to acting, by being in the moment. That's where the power is.
I used to pre-rehearse everything and then bring my pre-rehearsed performance to the set. Now, I'm learning to let it happen in the moment. American actors are much better at that than British actors. If I knew how to trust myself, I would have been much more relaxed. Maybe I would have less gray hairs today.
Acting is really instinctual and I think you can overanalyse what you're doing. A lot of it has to be based on instinct.
It's a writer's or director's role to be cerebral, whereas for an actor it should be a visceral, gut thing. When the action starts, it's best to turn the brain off and let it become an instinctual thing.
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 coaches in Hollywood were always telling me to use my hands and body more. But that was never me. I just breathe and sometimes it doesn't look as if I'm doing that.
I don't rehearse a lot. I try to keep it organic. Even in movies, the less I rehearse, the better I am.
I'd love to tell actors about all the things they don't need to worry about. Less is more. If you have it inside, you don't need to show too much. People pick up on things.
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'm probably one of the worst actors as far as preparation goes, because I actually don't prepare. I find it easier to read the script and whatever hits me in my stomach, like deep down, I just go with it. And the director kind of molds me whether to go right or left with it.
