Jim Parrack Quotes

I'm disappointed in acting as a craft. I want everything to go back to Orson Welles and fake noses and changing your voice. It's become so much about personality.

A performer needs to feel the part to be the part!

If I were to play somebody who ran a fish and chip shop, I would not work in a fish and chip shop for three months. Staring at chips is not going to help me in my performance.

In many ways, acting is really like a science to me to figure out the human behavior of any character that I'm playing.

Part of an actor's job is to find correlations between your own life and the life of the person you are playing.

Part of an actor's job is to draw up a back story.

It's easier to see in someone else, another actor, how they kind of disappear and then this other persona appears. A great actor is a thing of mystery.

For better or worse, I don't necessarily categorize myself as a method actor; I'm not going to make claims that I stayed in character 24/7.

I empty myself out and fill myself with the character. I would play a devil worshipper, and I would fill myself up with whatever devil worshippers believe. Then, as myself, I empty that out and become Nelsan.

I am trained in theatre, and so I take time to study and get into the skin of a character.

The first thing, the main thing, about how I work is I need to understand the character.

In 'There Will Be Blood,' my character was someone who was an actor himself almost. He had a rehearsed quality about him. He was a performance artist in a way.

I'm not a Method actor. I don't believe acting should be psychodrama. I look within myself and see what I can find to play the role with. If I'm playing a blind man, I don't go around blindfolded for days. A lot of good actors would, but I don't go in for that very much. I like to just make it up as I go along.

For actors, you've gotta sometimes fill in your backstory.

David Cronenberg knows what we actors do as artists.

I had to focus and create a character in Bagger Vance, not just do my 'Will Smith' thing and get paid.

Actors walk around wearing these little tool-belts of acting skills. And I just don't find that interesting to watch. I never want to see someone who clearly can cry at the drop of a hat. That's so uninteresting.

I'm always interested with other actors in what their process is, and are they still interested in acting, as opposed to being a star.

Yeah, I think the common denominator - and this is probably going to sound like Acting 101 - but the common denominator is belief in the character in the moment.

I would make the tea on a Daniel Day-Lewis set just to observe how he crafts roles like he did in 'My Left Foot.' That was the equivalent of seeing Haley's Comet for me. I just couldn't understand how that was possible.

I never act my characters - I am them.

When preparing a role, I work first on the body language and physical aspects of the performance; the psychological dimension comes naturally once I'm in character.

I always enjoy impersonating my characters in the first-person singular.

I think substitution is a huge part of acting, but I don't personalise my work that much.

That's precisely what we do as actors: try to convince the audience we are somebody else. And if you can do that, you are really doing something.