Quotes About Acting

If I only acted, I feel like I wouldn't have enough creative expression over my own sensibility, and also if I only acted, the notion of surrendering my fate and future to other people is deeply unsettling to me and it would make me uncomfortable.

A lot of the stuff that I do with Betty is in the eyes. A lot of the feelings that I evoke with her are unspoken, so that's been fun to play with.

Playing an unstable, bipolar, multiple-personality-disorder person is definitely up my alley.

My advice to actors? To successful actors, it's, 'sock it away,' and unsuccessful actors, it's just, 'Just keep at it. Don't do it unless you have to do it, and if you have to do it, keep - you've got to keep your instrument in shape.' You just got to keep on getting better. If you're not getting better, you're standing still.

I remember I was unsure about doing 'Shameless.' I'd never acted in anything so commercial. I read the script in the garden with my mum, Mary. She said it's filthy dirty, but she said these people have love and sex and nothing else. That made me take the role.

The first time I thought I should be an actor was in school. I thought, 'At least this is something for which I won't have to study.' But I've realised that an actor needs to be constantly unsure about what he's doing and about what's going on around him. The moment you think you've nailed it, you're dead.

When I left Oxford, I knew I wanted to act, but I was unsure how to go about it.

Although several actors have worked in films down South, I feel unsure of whether I will be able to emote and act as exuberantly as I do in Hindi and Bengali films.

You hope that when you're playing someone possibly unsympathetic that you can bring them something redeeming, something people can hang onto.

I played a real nasty little girl but most of the roles I had up until then were very sweet and very nice.

I feel ghostly unreal until I become somebody else again on the screen.

I love playing Blair Cramer, and I'm thrilled to see what more they have in store for her. After playing this role for so many years, I still feel like there is so much about her that is still untold.

I modeled myself after Deborah Kerr for her romantic, untouched quality; Ingrid Bergman for her strength; and Kay Kendall for her wonderful sense of humor.

There is no overacting, only untrue acting.

I never go into a scene - ever, ever, ever - thinking, I have to make myself more empathetic toward the audience. Once you start doing that, you get into really dangerous territory. I think you start to become kind of untrue to the character.

I was unusual looking - I didn't have the look of that time. If you look at 'Lucas' - and, basically, my first five or six movies - the characters are not described in the scripts as attractive people.

I try to do more intelligent roles, unusual roles, and stronger women, and that's helped me a little bit with my casting opportunities.

It was really unusual to go from being in university for four years to all of a sudden acting every day. I'd never been able to do it exclusively like that. It was always sort of like my secret thing that I did privately.

On 'Scrubs,' I played a very unusual character who pretty much was defined by saying and doing strange things, so it was easy to improvise around that.

My whole history of being an actor is unusual and slightly disgraceful because it should be something you burn to do.

It's very unusual to be playing something other than human.

Sometimes I get a script that says, 'Only you can play it.' But I like roles in films with little moments - a hand movement in 'Melancholia.' I don't like the big speeches - the 'Oscar speech.' I like to do unusual things on screen.

It was in India that I started my acting career, courtesy of my parents, long before I set foot on stage in England. They headed a company of travelling players performing Shakespeare up and down the land.

My first film, 'Like Minds,' was with Toni Colette, who was extraordinary. I mean it was basically a mini-masterclass for acting on film at a time when all you could probably see were my eyebrows bouncing up and down on screen.