Paul Dano Quotes

A lot of actors talk about doing their homework, but very few of them do it.

I generally don't feel the need to do more research than is necessary to play the part for me, to inform me.

Basically, the way you get into any role is just doing research on the type of character you're playing.

With any character I do, I do my due diligence with research.

I'm not the kind of actor who goes into exhaustive research for each role.

What I mostly do is take the script, analyse the hell out of it, see what's in there, see what kind of person I'm dealing with, and then forget I'm playing a father and just play a person who exemplifies all those things.

The first thing I do when I read a part is see if I can identify emotionally with a character. If I make that connection, everything else is just working on knowing their life circumstances and manifesting those through practice and research.

I don't really ever think about whether or not I like the characters I'm playing. I'm more into the minutiae of their behaviour or what they're doing in a certain scene.

When I get a role, I try to delve as deeply as possible into the character.

I figure out who I'm playing opposite, and I really do study them.

As an actor, I like to get a bit of momentum going with a character and kind of work a bit quicker. I mean, not crazy-fast, but, you know, five or six pages a day is a nice pace.

Part of an actor's job is to find correlations between your own life and the life of the person you are playing.

My favorite part about working in theater is the rehearsal process. I absolutely love the rehearsal process. Working out the characters, figuring the character out, and the relationships between the different characters. I love all of that, which, unfortunately in film, you get very little opportunity to have.

In the time between when you first read a script and are offered the role and the time when you begin to shoot, I really love putting in the time and work on that and getting a solid backstory to a character and researching all that I can about what that person does for a vocation or their upbringing or where they're from.

Any sort of role requires a certain amount of research and embodiment of the character and psychological investigation.

I think for everyone it's good to have your own personal work on a character and a film before you even start rehearsing, to have an inner life.

If I prepare myself for a character, for a role, I always try to understand her.

As an actor, it is my job to prepare for the role I am playing.

I don't prepare for my characters.

I never do any research for my roles.

That's one thing I like to do before going in for a read - doing research once I actually have been granted the role - is to look up people's names.

For me, rehearsal is only about blocking and pacing; it's not about performance.

The way I prepare is through script analysts and back story. I create back story for a character based on script analysts, filling in as many details as possible. I also do a lot of research.

It's always interesting researching characters and as I get older and the more that I work in this business, I do more and more of it because I realize how important it is.

I need to react to a script, to feel strongly about it in some way. And I need it to be a complex character for sure. And also, I think a lot about what kind of audience there is for the film, what they're looking for and ways to connect with them in the playing of a character.