Ian Holm Quotes

For me, acting is a series of impressions rather than trying to find one line through to the end, which risks becoming more of a presentation.

As an actor, you can do what you want with your role. That's why they hire you; to take the role and make it real.

I'm not a big method actor. I'm much more superficial.

Each character I play has different dimensions. I'm not interested in words that pull them together.

I realise that certain actors project their own image onto the screen - those who are the same on as they are off. But I've never had the necessary statistics to be able to do that sort of thing, and so, anyway, I always wanted to be a character actor.

I never do roles, I play people.

My acting style changes according to the way a character is imagined.

When Mouni Roy became Naagin' or even Adaa Khan, Surbhi Jyoti, everybody did it differently, so I want to do it my way as well.

Well, as an actor, at least from my standpoint, I can't not like who I'm playing.

It was important to have a similar energy in my performance. To make the character too different would have just been about my ego because it didn't need to be drastically different.

In every character you play, as much as you hate to admit it as an actor, but there's an element of you that you bring to it.

I tend to get comfortable with the dialogue and find out who the person is in the script and try to hit that. People are sort of independent of their occupations and their pastimes. You don't play a politician or a fireman or a cowboy - you just play a person.

I don't act in the way other actresses act, in terms of building or creating a character. I don't transform myself into the role, I invest myself in the role.

I tend not to have any references to anything. I just jump into the script in front of me. If you reference too much, you have no idea if the performances are right.

As a matter of principle, I always come to a film like a blank slate, I don't learn my lines in advance. With this approach, I feel clean.

I'm not an actress who can create a character. I play me.

For me, personality acting is not that interesting. I don't want to just be myself.

That's what I love about acting, is playing different roles. I want to work for the character, and not make it work for me.

I like to try to change things up a bit in the way that actors such as Philip Seymour Hoffman or Michael Fassbender did and do.

See, that's the thing: I'm not one of those actors who thinks, 'God, I've got to improvise and make it my own.' No, my first job as an actor is to take what's written and make it work. And then, if they want me to improvise, I'll do that.

You can't generalise, of course, but there is a school of American acting where there is a kind of pride in the number of takes you can do.

That's the thing about film acting and television acting. You just release yourself and do what is true for the moment, and ignore everybody and everything and all the technical razzmatazz that goes on.

There are a lot of actors who will sit here and talk to you about characters - 'He does this, and she's a really interesting character because she does this.' I'm not like that at all. I'm not an actory actor.

I know there are some actors who are just brilliant at improvising and brilliant at just being in the moment and doing it there and then. I'm not one of those actors.

I know a lot of actors who get a part and then they dissect it and they want to change it and they want to add stuff. I'm always amazed and so impressed by actors who do that.