Acting Instinct Quotes

I find that a lot of the good acting comes out when you're physically being pushed: your brain turns off and just deals with the situation at hand. You get to a point where you're exhausted at the end of the day, but I quite like that.

I don't know acting, but I choose good stories and portray emotions according to the story.

Even when I'm reading a script where I'm supposed to be looking at the lead role, I'll find myself gravitating toward some small weirdo in a few scenes instead. I'm very instinctive like that and I love the challenge of not having a lot of time to create someone who feels real.

I sense an actor in me.

People say, 'Well, whose career do you follow? Where do you see your career going? What movie do you want to do next?' And I can't tell you what type of movie I would go and do next. I would have to read the script and feel for a character. And if I feel in my gut for a character, I know that that's somebody I have to play.

I feel like with acting it's not like you make a choice - it's kind of in you and you have to do it or you wouldn't be able to survive.

Acting is invigorating. But I don't analyse it too much. It's like a dog smelling where it's going to do its toilet in the morning.

I have a tendency as an actress in general to ground my characters. Even when doing outlandish characters, that's my instinct.

A lot of people have asked whether acting is in my genes. I don't know if anyone is born to act. And it certainly wasn't pushed on me. It was something I wanted to do.

I was so passionate about wanting the role in 'Like Crazy,' I filmed myself in the shower because that's where one of the scenes was set. It just felt instinctive. It was a close up! It would have been strange if I'd sent off a wide shot of myself. That's not the kind of work I want to do!

When I'm shooting a film, I don't look at playback. I don't go and do a scene and then hurry up and watch what I just did. I never look at it so I haven't seen any of it.

No, I don't have to practice that grunt. You just do it. Once you're in character, you're in character. You don't sit there purposely thinking, Well, I'll grunt here, or I'll groan there.

Acting is like driving; you can never forget it, and it's in my blood.

Notes are tricky in an audition, because I find, more often than not, my instinct is right. If they have a preconceived notion about the role and it goes against my instinct, unless it makes sense to me, it often throws off what I'm trying to do. Though sometimes they have an insight that I don't because they've been living with the script. I don't have one feeling or another about notes, but it is always a little bit of a red alert when I get one in an audition.

There's a kind of chemical spark that comes sometimes with the character, that you don't even have to think about how she is reacting, you just let yourself go. You just let the character take you, instead of taking the character.

I never really took any acting classes. I'm just a natural ham, I guess.

In acting, you get to explore such an artistic side with different characters to research and learn and explore different things inside yourself and I do that anyway, so I might as well be doing something that I already do, as in a second nature to me, on film.

You can't act for the editing. You just go in and do the scene the way you think is right.

I think by that time I knew where Chewie was going, and he left me to do what was called for, because the character had been well established. You know, it was like putting on a second skin by that time.

I think there are a lot of actors who act because they have an impulse to do it and they can't ignore it.

I don't remember ever not knowing about acting.

My approach to acting is that I am totally intuitive. I read the script and I get it. If I don't get it, I can't do it.

We didn't have a lot of time to really prepare for a great chemistry. It was more instantaneous and instinctive. In the morning I went to Daniel Craig trailer and if I wanted to make some changes there was sort of a go between me and the director. It was good because Daniel is always like, "C'mon let's go for it. Let's fight for it!"

When I was very small, I had that first-time-you-see-a-play experience, which immediately made me want to act, because it seemed like this incredible outlet for something I was already doing fairly compulsively anyway, which was putting on hats and costumes and doing funny voices. It was a very natural compulsion for me.

A lot of acting, and I believe this, is either you can do it or you can't.