Quotes About Acting

In my 20s, when I was acting, I probably had a little bit of a personality crisis in the sense that everybody related to me as Bruce Lee's daughter.

Making a living out of acting sounded like science-fiction when I was growing up. I didn't know anyone around me who lived from anything related to art.

In terms of the parallels, I've never related less to a character than Riggan.

When someone gets closely related to a character they play on TV, it's very hard to break that mold and go on to do something else.

Everything motivates me to do my work. Has anyone seen me in any commercial or in anything that is not related to the films? No, because filmmaking and acting is my only work.

Acting is all about relating to the people on stage with you, even in plays that break the fourth wall. Clowning, for the most part, is the opposite. If somebody in the audience sneezes, I can count on it: I don't even have to look at Shiner; he'll have his handkerchief out. It's all about all of us in the room together.

The journalist in me always loved relating and socialising and connecting with people, but there came a point where I needed to make a decision to stop that being my focus and really focus on acting - an audience are only really going to believe me as a character to an extent if they don't know me as Lily that well.

I never thought of myself doing period. When you're in your acting classes, and you think about the kind of roles you want to play, it's always 'modern relationship drama'-type things.

It defiantly helps the chemistry onscreen if the audience can tell if the relationship is real or not.

As an actor, of course it's exciting to go and explore characters. It's exciting to explore human psychology and relationships, and that's really the drive, at the end of the day, for me.

You have to read scripts and audition and develop relationships. It takes a long time to develop a body of work but over the last 25 years I guess I've done that many movies. In hindsight it may seem effortless, but there's a lot of work that goes into it.

I don't really like those sorts of actresses who say, 'I don't want to make that movie,' but they make the movie. They just spend their time not liking being on a set and I just think it's absurd, because we are so lucky to do this job. When you accept to make a movie, just make the movie. And then it's more easy for relationships.

Ever since I was five, I had told my relatives I wanted to be an actress.

You don't have to do offbeat films to prove that you can act. I have done it but only to prove myself that I can fit convincingly into every kind of films. I want to do the 100 crore film where the hero does all the work, and I get to relax.

If I could go back to my first year of acting school, I'd probably say: 'Relax. Stop taking yourself so seriously.'

Bottom line: I can relax in L.A. I think I'm the only person in that town who doesn't want to act. I was an OK singer. I was an OK dancer. But acting? Never could do it.

The important thing with memorising a part is not to force it. Sometimes when you're rehearsing, you'll think it's not going in, but it is. On stage, you have to trust that the lines are there, because they are. The real challenge is to relax.

Doing films like 'Judwaa' helps me relax, and that should be my reason for doing it, not to compensate for doing films like 'Pink.'

Damnation' and 'Dublin Murders' are the first lead roles I've gotten to do. The more time you spend in front of the camera, the more you begin to relax in front of it.

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.

I find in film acting that however many years you have done it for, you can feel totally relaxed and at ease with the people around you, absolutely wonderful, then roll camera and a little part of you goes, 'Ugh'. It is learning how to manage that.

I do know that the key to anything good is feeling relaxed and free. That's the main thing that you can offer yourself as an actor.

School allowed me to have outlets so that some of the pressure was taken off the acting. Every role in every movie, I used to live or die by. Once I had these new outlets, I relaxed a lot more.

Some days are more intense and quiet, and then other days, you feel more relaxed and are able to open up on set. It just depends on what you're doing that day. I like to imagine that all the choices you make during the day that you're doing a particular scene are going to feed into the creation of that scene.