Debra Granik Quotes

One of the things I find about acting is that the less the audience knows about the actor, the more they're able to believe in him in the role.

I think when your image becomes so big that it's hard for a viewer to see a character, then I think you're in danger as an actor of being unable to perform what you should be doing.

If a movie is really working, you forget for two hours your Social Security number and where your car is parked. You are having a vicarious experience. You are identifying, in one way or another, with the people on the screen.

I hate acting when I see it. I don't want to feel it, I don't want to see it, I want to be taken away with the story - I don't want the actor's ego in front of me. That's what I try to live when I do the work.

Every little thing that people know about you as a person impedes your ability to achieve that kind of terrific suspension of disbelief that happens when an audience goes with an actor and character he's playing.

I'm not a media personality, I'm an actress. I want to protect that thing: the suspension of disbelief. The rest of it is just distraction.

I think the biggest compliment an actor can have is if people forget who they're watching and get lost in the character.

I don't think I was bubbly in 'Oohalu Gusagusalade.' It was a real character.

The only pressure, as an actor, is to step into Eric Carter's shoes and make him as fully and as complex and as flawed and as human as I could.

When you're portraying someone, whether they're real or fictional, you have to find some kind of hook where it feels real to you because if you don't believe it yourself, then no one else is going to believe it.

And I think that when I play these villains, maybe what is different is that the audience sees me play these and they know that that's Chris and he's having fun and he knows that and he knows that and you know that and everybody knows that.

When I was acting, I got trained in creating a character as a three-dimensional person. If you're doing it right you should be able to draw an audience into the character's world and make them feel their fears.

Acting is make-believe. I never believe I'm the character; I want you to believe.

Part of me becomes the characters I'm writing about. I think readers feel like they are there, the way I am, as a result.

There's a challenge to playing these fantasy figures because they are fantasy figures. You have to enter into this sort of imaginative world of the writer.

You play your character and it isn't right to step out of it. You have to stay in that character.

I can't act, and so I have to live that particular character in my real life and then exhibit it on screen.

When you're playing a real person, there's a balance between playing the person in the script and playing the person as he was in life. You have to be respectful and true to who that person was, but at the same time tell the story in the film.

You never saw Peter Sellers the actor trying to make you laugh. All he was doing was the character. What I'm saying is that I don't think you should know you're in a movie. I don't like it when actors are winking at the audience and saying, 'Right, isn't this funny? Are you with me?'

We give you characters we'd feel very comfortable judging, and then go: 'Oh yeah? Watch this'.

I mean, I do believe that when you walk on the stage, or onto the screen, that's your character - not you. So it's an interesting challenge, an interesting line to walk.

My job as an actor is to cover and expose in varying allowance that - so that the audience can peek through the window to the people I create.

As an actor, the biggest compliment you can get, in my book is for someone to believe that you're the character.

The theoretical casting part of movies is the funnest part. You really can imagine so many different versions of a story based on who's embodying it.

I suppose I've got a reputation for playing quite extreme characters and making them quite believable.