Quotes About Acting

'Mindy' was fun. Other than 'Superstore,' it was the other time I played an elitist, obnoxious idiot.

I don't necessarily want to be defined as an action star. I love movies, and my movie culture, luckily because of my parents and my family, is quite obscure and independent.

I act by observation.

I get to pick so many things as an actor. Also, I'm a good observer of people and their mannerisms.

The better I am at observing moments in life, the better I'll be at showing them in my acting.

I am observing that to become an actor, people say, they want to join gym. Why join a gym? Why don't you join an institute where they teach you how to act?

I'm good at observing people, physical stuff, which leant itself to acting.

I'm obsessed with subtexts. I love that we often don't say what we feel. That gap between the two. I like it when actors reveal a lot without having to say it.

'La Vie en Rose' is just about my favorite movie. Marion Cotillard, I'm so desperately obsessed with her work.

As a kid, I was obsessed with Meryl Streep, and I still am.

I'd say I'm a pretty intense person. I'm definitely not my Denise character on 'Scrubs,' nor my Jane character on 'Happy Endings,' but I'm a mix of the two. I really feel that I'm kind of every character that I've ever played; it's just a part of me. And I am a bit of a control freak like Jane. I'm very, perhaps, obsessive like that.

As an actor, secrets and obstacles fuel the character.

It was obvious what kind of game they were playing on the set of Amityville.

I just think, in every acting choice that you make, you've got to go for the least obvious choice.

One of my favourite games as a child was to dress up and improvise. Acting seemed obvious.

I wasn't an obvious actress in any sense of the word.

I think I think in the moment. So when I'm in character, I'm in character, and I'm obviously thinking about what's going on around me, but it's easier to do stuff when you're in character.

When I had the wonderful occasion to play a goofball, Jane, in 'Coupling,' it was definitely an homage to Julia Louis-Dreyfus, who I just think is a genius.

I don't mind being stereotyped in some way and playing certain kinds of guys, but if I can find something to occasionally get a break from that, that would be nice. And I feel like I manage to.

You know, to an extent, Method acting feels occasionally lazy.

Occasionally, when you do a take, and - what I kind of sort of like is asking for a PPB - Personal Play Back.

I did this movie, 'A Walk Among the Tombstones' - I truly play a horrible, horrible individual in that - and I would occasionally go to the theater and watch what people's responses were, and they would laugh. He makes jokes, and people would respond to him in a human way. Then I've really done my job if I've humanized a really horrible person.

Occasionally, as an actor, you're not... Sometimes, at least for me, I'm not fully in the groove until the second or third take, in which I would not want to just stop. If it's a scene that takes a lot of work and time, sometimes the scene gets better with time, and sometimes it gets exhausted. I think it just depends on the scene.

In Valentine's experience, normality was always a pretense, people acting out what they thought were their expected roles