Joel Kinnaman Quotes

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.

I try to create as many circumstances outside of set that help me fall into character when I get onto set.

I'm not a method actor. I try to stay separate but to imagine what they'd feel, to put myself in their shoes.

I guess I'm probably a Method actor; I don't know... I just think of it as staying in the zone.

Obviously an actor draws on his own experience.

I'm not a method actor, but I'm affected by the life I share my life with during shooting. It's always a very strange and special period for me.

As an actor, you use the things from yourself that you can apply to the character.

As an actor you bring some of your own experiences which can make things easier. You build off of it, but your imagination is always the best thing you have as far as creating things I think specifically for what that character is going through. But you're definitely drawing obviously upon things that you can connect to, and then you kind of mold the change that you're making into something that's right for the character.

It kind of varies. I don’t have a method yet. It depends on the script and the character I think I need. I’ve worked with acting coaches, researched roles, and channeled different parts of myself. It’s on a case-by-case for me, right now.

I take my time to get into the mindset of the character and say my lines. I really have to be the person that I am playing.

I don't do method acting. If I play a farmer, I'm not gonna spend 3 weeks on a chicken farm. That's a bit too much for me.

The only way I can be there and really get into the character is if I'm her.

Actors pull from their own experiences to bring reality to the characters. I wouldn't want to play someone who's a lot like me. There would be no turning it on or off.

I think it is very important to be a method actor.

Sometimes you can just step into the character, and you get all your feelings and emotions just from sympathizing with her and being her. But then, other times, you just have to resort back to anything that you've been through in your own life and try to play that.

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

The actor cannot afford to look only to his own life for all his material nor pull strictly from his own experience to find his acting choices and feelings.

You jot down ideas, memories, whatever, concerning your real life that somehow parallels the character you're playing, and you incorporate that in your scene work.

How do I act so well? What I do is I pretend to be the person I'm portraying in the film or play.

I've never been a method actress; I've never been that person that wants to imagine horrible things happening in your own life in order to exploit them for your emotional being in the movie. I'm just not good at doing that.

You have to come in and be that character when you walk into the room. That's what one of my first acting teachers taught me. You know, don't go in there being Jennifer and then expect to flip and change, because they're not going to have that imagination.

I trained at the Lee Strasberg Institute at Tisch, which is a huge foundation for young actors. They teach you their methods and give you the sense that acting is much more tangible than most people think. I think there's a mysticism of what acting is, in the fact that it's this ungraspable, spur-of-the-moment thing that nobody can understand.

You draw on whatever's relevant to the part you're playing; it makes it more personal.

I consider myself an actor that tries to have as many tools as possible in the bag. And I think that includes the method, then of course it includes some improv techniques, and includes all kinds of different things, because you never know when you're going to have to work on something and in what way.

I'm a Method actor. I spent years training for the drinking and carousing I had to do in this film.