I always felt that, when I saw Denzel or Viola do scenes in their past films or past projects, that if it's a heavy scene, and it's requiring a lot of emotional weight, that we would have nothing but silence and incense burning in between takes just to keep things quiet.
The thing I hated about it was that you live in your trailer all the time and then they call you and you do maybe two dozen lines. Then they do that for three hours and you wait and wait and wait, and I don't like waiting.
Every actor I think has got their own number of takes that they like, you know. Some actors like to go all day, you know on the one scene and some actors want to take two takes. I personally like four.
On a movie set, there's so much down time, adjusting the lighting. It gave me time to nap, call my friends, relax, work out. But with TV, there's no break time. None.
I was walking around with the babies so much that when I got to the Sidney Lumet picture, I would be on set in between takes and I'd be rocking back and forth. Just standing like this rocking back and forth, and Sidney would say, Why are you walking like that in between takes?
There can be a lot of waiting around on any film set.
In theatre, once you've got the character and you've got things together, you can relax into it. Film has a different feel - you don't get that through line of not stopping. Theatre is like a snowball gathering momentum and getting bigger, whereas in film, it's a bit stop and start - but you do tend to adjust to that quite easily.
I'm not a person who needs to chit-chat between takes by any means.
