Carey Mulligan Quotes

If it's a 50-seat theater, I am neurotic about whether I'm doing an honest performance. Sometimes I walk away happy enough with it. You know, it can always be better, but sometimes I'll walk away distraught, feeling like I missed the pulse of the character that evening.

As long as I can make an audience feel something, I don't care whether it's a good thing or bad thing, just to feel something is important to me.

The audience likes their emotions to be touched. They want to laugh and cry and feel good.

As an actor, you know when you've got great material in front of you. When you're working, you think, 'Is this the one? The one that everyone will respond to and be moved by?' You pray that you have told the story well... that your peers will see it and audiences will love it.

That's my job as an actor - to go on and try to do the work so subtle and so fine and specific that the memories will linger for a long time.

When I go for a project, I wonder what underpinning a project will have that's going to give the audience some emotional access to it.

If you start to disrespect the character you're playing, or play it too much for laughs, that can work for a sketch, it will sell some gags, but it's all technique. It's like watching a juggler - you can be impressed by it, but it's not going to touch you in any way.

Good acting comes from finding the essence of a character.

I think anything emotional adds to your acting and singing, no matter what it is that you go through. It will always add to it, never take away.

I think good entertainment makes you feel something... it can be a variety of different feelings.

There are so many factors that go into how you feel, as a performer, on any given movie, that it's really hard to identify which things are the things that help you be good, and which are the things that hinder you.

I question what emotion Manilow touches. People are entertained by him. But are they emotionally moved? I don't believe anything that Barry Manilow sings.

If you're feeling emotional when you're creating something, it'll sound that way.

Actors make choices for different reasons.

I think that with any emotion - fear, love, nervousness - if the actor's feeling it, then the audience feels it.

I wanted to make people feel the same way I feel when I see a good movie.

In terms of likeability, that's something that I don't think about as an actor when I approach a role.

Ninety percent of a good performance of an actor is based on the material. If you've got the material there, you can ride it.

If you are a great dramatic actor then you often don't know if people are enjoying your stuff at all because they are sitting there in silence.

You try to work with the director and your fellow actors to get somewhere, but other people are the judge of whether you hit that note right.

Above all, I try to create an emotion to which others can respond.

The one thing for an actor that is complete death is if you're bored, because that boredom will show in your work.

If it makes you cry, it goes in the show.

I am very into lyrics. I start with what the words are saying, what the storyline is saying, like a good script. It should really capture me, do something for me. If I don't get it, it's not going to move people, and if it's not going to move people, it's not going to happen.

The most amazing thing for me is that every single person who sees a movie, not necessarily one of my movies, brings a whole set of unique experiences. Now, through careful manipulation and good storytelling, you can get everybody to clap at the same time, to hopefully laugh at the same time, and to be afraid at the same time.