Ben Barnes Quotes

I feel like, when I play characters, I create a space in myself that feels like the character and that doesn't go away. Somehow, you carry that with you. You let it go, but a little piece of it remains.

Any time you make a movie where you're living in a certain head space for an extended period of time, it's tough not to take a little piece home with you.

I have an occasionally recurring stutter, but not when in character on stage in a play. Odd. James Earl Jones has the same pattern; he stutters in everyday life but not when acting. Preparation requires an actor's concentration to make the words belong to another person, which is its own sort of trance.

Getting all dressed up and putting on fancy clothes - all of that's a great thing, but oddly, it doesn't really have a lot to do with acting most of the time.

It's very strange to become a character: the lines get blurred, and you start to sort of, I don't know, take it home too much?

I'd never played a character as long as I played Poussey. Spending time with her, so much time embodying that character, it was so - and still is and always will be - so special to me and a part of who I am.

To play these twisted, tormented characters is very draining. You have to sit in the pocket of that character for the duration of the shoot, which is normally an average of three months, and that can be taxing!

Getting out of a character is emotionally taxing. You get used to being a person on camera, and when you move on, the character remains with you for a long time.

As an actor, you're lucky if you get a month before a project starts. There are times when you get a day before a project starts. So to be able to really sit and inhabit that mind and the story is really beneficial, and it really helps for me to be able to then compartmentalize as we're shooting and detach and go somewhere else.

I wouldn't say I'm a method actor. I do research when I feel I don't have enough experience for the part I'm playing.

When you finish a film, if you believed in your character, you're empty.

What I mostly do is take the script, analyse the hell out of it, see what's in there, see what kind of person I'm dealing with, and then forget I'm playing a father and just play a person who exemplifies all those things.

I don't think a lot of actors talk about it, but there's usually a process where you essentially purge yourself of the character that you played prior to the movie.

The great thing about being an actor in a film is that you're able to start knowing exactly where you're going to finish and really paint something in between. You can work to know the arc you need to build. Whereas in television, it is open-ended, and you're constantly guessing. There are pros and cons to both.

Any time you play a character for a long period of time, regardless of how close it is to you, it infiltrates your life. It's impossible for it not to.

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.

You always take a little bit back with you at the end of the day. I always put a little bit of myself into the characters, too. You find parallels, points of connection, things like that. But I'm not an actor who gets so incredibly haunted by my characters that I can't come back.

I have to believe in the character to perform it.

You know what it is, when I'm playing a role sometimes, I just tend to stay in that role. It's easier to maintain. We just shot a pilot in a very thick American accent. I feel like the character lives in me. Of course, my family tease me about it.

I wish sometimes that I could be Daniel Day-Lewis and say, 'You know what? If you want me to do this, I'm going to need a year to prepare myself.' But if I do that, they'll say, 'Thank you very much,' and they'll take someone else.

I'm affected by the characters I play, and sometimes they're hard to live with.

Whatever I'm working on, the character I'm playing tends to slowly bleed into my own real life. Not in any kind of creepy, Method actor-y kind of way - it's just an innate kind of merging.

Certain characters get to me and stay with me for a while.

I always fall in love with every character I play.

After six months of playing Chris Darden, it's very hard for me to separate my views from his.