Quotes About Acting

I am going to be on 'True Blood.' It was really exciting. I had a great time shooting it. I spent the last nine months shooting this season and it was very secretive, very sexy, a lot of blood and fangs.

At one point I had a stretch where it was working on 'In Treatment,' then 'True Blood,' then 'Durham County,' then 'True Blood,' then 'In Treatment' again. If I didn't have that little dose of 'True Blood' in the middle, I might have lost my mind.

Especially when it comes to something like the awards, I find it kind of baffling that 'True Blood' has been snubbed so many times given the incredible range of acting they have on there; I mean, incredible storytelling and the incredible production values.

I think if people want to go back and look at season two of 'True Blood,' I'm proud of my work in that.

My first five or six years in L.A., I was just trying to get two cents together to stay here. Playing Jason Stackhouse on 'True Blood' put me in a position, financially, to make decisions based on creativity, to choose roles based on whether I connected with them. I love the Jason Stackhouse character... But I also love stepping out of his shoes.

I was so nervous that this was 'True Detective' and that I needed to do a good job that I would just dig into every scene.

With 'True Detective,' you have a lot of time. How I like to describe it... it's like you're filming a theater piece.

I love gritty dramas, 'Queen Sugar,' 'True Detective' - stuff like that, but I also love quippy comedies - those multi-cam comedies with incredibly talented and funny casts with perfect comedic timing.

I didn't go to drama school, so I didn't really have many true friends in the business; 'Game Of Thrones' has definitely brought me that.

'True Lies' reinvented me in the eyes of a new generation and got me offers.

I love acting. Acting is a true love of mine, acting and math. Although they are both creative, they use very different sides of your brain. And I love both. Acting is my first love, and that's my main career, it really is.

In college, that was when I felt that acting is the one I really wanted because I got to be my true self; this is what I want to do for the rest of my life.

I believe in the fact that to portray a character convincingly, you need to live that character, own that character. You have to be earnest with every line that you deliver. However, it doesn't mean that you have to cut off your true self.

I think I've played a lesbian about five times. The first one was with Helen Baxendale in a drama called 'The Investigator,' about the conditions lesbians had to live under in the army in Britain, which was based on a true story.

When you play a character that's someone real, when you're playing a true story, it's really great 'cause you're not pretending to make up some silly thing.

The fundamental job of the actor is to tell about the human condition, to be a voice for the truest ideas and deepest emotions.

Those who talk to themselves are the truest actors.

The acting served as an outlet for my emotions for some time because I was doing it under the guise of someone else. And that can only be therapeutic up to a point until you truly deal with it and can express it to someone directly. Acting was a helpful outlet for me as a child. In some ways, I can say it saved my life.

Look at someone like Edward Norton. A truly phenomenal actor. He's definitely went to school and trained.

I never said I wanted to be a lead actress; I never said I wanted to be a film actress. This need to trump everyone bewilders me. I'm only 25. I'm not better than anyone. I just want to watch other people and learn to be good.

I had this totally impossible dream of being an actress. Trust me, just because I'm lucky enough to be doing this doesn't make any of this less of a pipe dream. And nothing gets my juices flowing like a really great performance. To see someone on stage, I get really excited.

I have no desire to direct at all. I know how much pressure it is, and, trust me, it's so much easier and so much more fun to be an actor.

Trust me, with the kind of roles I have played, it's a miracle that I still have a career. I am a miracle.

I found that the more I'd done Shakespeare, and the more I trusted my instincts and applied the same rules you would apply to any scene, the closer I got to how it's meant to be acted.