Courtney B. Vance Quotes

I'm not one of those actresses that asks what's going to happen. I've never been. I just take the scripts, and I see what's given to me, and I go with it that way.

With theatre, you have to be ready for anything.

I don't like improvising on camera, particularly, but very often, a scene will not be working, and you rehearse it once or twice, and you realize something's missing. So I'll play with it until it makes sense.

Most actors spend a lot of time training themselves to be an actor. And I kind of didn't do that. I just started doin' it in front of an audience and had to deliver.

Once we got the scene down, we were told to improv.

I'm good with a script.

I research every part thoroughly. I talk it out with my actor friends, but then I throw it all away when I get to the set. You have to be spontaneous.

The day before I work, I don't like to even look at the script and let whatever happens happen on the set. But I do prepare a lot. I'm a big believer in that.

You have to run, an awful lot, on instinct. Even on 'Veep,' it's not like you get weeks of rehearsal to break out what's going on in the scenes.

You can't really plan with acting!

For me, you have to do as much work as you can beforehand and, once you get on stage or set, throw it out the window because you need to be collaborative. You shouldn't have too many ideas about where it goes before you get into the room with the director and other actors.

As an actor, I go with the flow.

A lot of lines in movies were written, but I'm always improvising. Once you get into the scene, it just comes to me.

I memorize my lines and I show up. I think it's just instinctual, and sometimes it's wrong and the director says, "No, do it this way." And then I can change, because I didn't spend all night practicing it this one way. All I do to get ready for the day is the night before, I read my lines once or twice, memorize them, and then I show up.

Sometimes I do love to rehearse, but I always switch it up depending on whom I'm working with.

I have a reputation for being an improvisational actor, which is true, but I also know what I'm doing so that if the improvisational strand doesn't work I can go back to what I know's already there.

Well, I love acting, and I love acting quick.

When I do a take, I very often try things that I haven't planned to try to see if I can pull it off.

Sometimes you don't want to get married too much to a lot of rehearsing, I feel, when it comes to film, because there's so many technicalities. So if I'm in my head, I've gotten settled on something, I'm gonna have to change it if I get there and something was set that's completely different.

I just arrive, they hand me a script and say, do it.

In a way, as an actor, you do all the preparation and then you want to forget it and just play the scene. As a director, you can't forget it because somebody will remind you that you forgot something. But you can know your plan well enough that you still have a certain amount of freedom.

When I rehearse, it ends up doing more harm than good. I think I work a little bit better when it's right off the bat. Mostly, I try to wrap my head around a role as much as I can without rehearsing and then kind of make it as fresh as possible on the day.

As an actor, you don't know what is going to come next.

Acting to me is always reacting.

I love to be in the position of not knowing what I'm gonna do, but having rehearsed all of those so when something happens with the others actors I go with whatever that is I'm getting.