Natalie Portman Quotes

Method acting? There are quite a few methods. Mine involves a lot of talent, a glass, and some cracked ice.

For the actor, The Lee Strasberg Notes are an indispensable companion.

I hate the word "method acting." It's just so silly. You hear people going, "Yeah I'm a method actor." I'm like, "So what happens if you're playing a period film or something? You're in the Second World War. And what happens when your mom calls you on your phone? Do you go, 'Oh! What is this strange talking brick device?'" No. It's stupid. But you do everything you can to get in that mindset.

I always think upon Lee Strasberg with warmth, and reviewing his wisdom is a pleasure.

Actually I want to scare away method actors because it's a pain. It's like, 'Come on, what are you doing? It's not real. What are you doing? Oh, you're really brooding. Okay, good. Go to your trailer. I'll see you in an hour.'

Having a guy on a microphone yelling lines at you is counter to a lot of acting techniques.

You know, I don't support esoteric approaches to acting.

Acting is the only medium were people think they can just stand up and do it because they can say lines, but that is not so much the case. You have to study styles and techniques.

I think I'm more the method acting school.

I was someone who was out of control and not to be worked with. It was partly because method acting was a new thing in Hollywood then and Marlon Brando had gotten through and Montgomery Clift had gotten through and James Dean but beyond that there wasn't really anybody.

I was always drawn toward the Actor's Studio. I studied at the Lee Strasberg Institute when I first came to New York. One of my favorite teachers was one of Al [Pachino]'s teachers, a guy named Charlie Laughton, who was just a wonderful, wonderful man.

It certainly helps, I think, with some actors to understand the process of acting. You see what extraordinary pressure they're under, there's a huge circus dedicated to a particular moment and they're got to deliver and it can help that you, even if empathetically alone, understand what they're doing.

My problem with the traditional acting method was that I never understood what you were supposed to be thinking about when you're onstage.

I think for acting on stage and in film, one informs the other. Obviously, they require really different kinds of discipline and really different kinds of work. It's more along the same continuum, for me.

The notion that acting is simply about intuitively responding to situations the way you feel couldn't be farther away from how I ask actors to work.

There's probably no one who understands Method acting better academically than I do, or actually uses it more in his work. But it's funny - nobody really sees that. It's perception versus reality, I suppose.

Almost everything I learned about being an actor came from those early years at the Actor's Studio.

Movie acting is harder than doing a play. You have to be entertaining but completely natural, like Jimmy Stewart and Cary Grant. They weren't doing anything. Do you have any idea how hard that is? That's how good they were. It's crazy hard to be convincing and real. It's the most subtle, hardest thing there is.

I am not a method actor, though I studied for a year with Lee Strasburg.

I joined the Actors Studio and began to work with Lee Strasberg, and that changed my work.

I was a student of Sanford Meisner for three years at the Neighborhood Playhouse, and I studied with Lee Strasburg for five years and became a member of the Actors Studio. What I studied came right from the horse's mouth. My students have a lot to learn from me, and I am so eager to share it.

There's no such thing as The Method. The term 'method-acting' is so much nonsense. There are many methods, many techniques.

I have no idea what 'method actor' means.

There's so much to learn about acting and performance in general... I mean, acting is a very complex art, and there are a lot more theories and methods and techniques to it than I think anybody would think.

I like to be in character a good few hours before I arrive for filming.