Character Immersion Quotes

I'm always happier and a better actor when I can really lose myself in a character and become somebody else.

I love people like Renée Zellweger who aren't afraid to look unattractive and really put themselves into a character role and to really be an actress instead of just thinking "Am I on-screen pouting and looking beautiful?" because that's not really what it's about.

Part of acting is having the security to turn yourself loose and let yourself go in order to reach whatever depths a character has. If your guts aren't hanging out there, you don't offer anything.

I've also grown as an actor as I've got older in life. I've learnt how to go to work, immerse myself 100 per cent in the character and, at the end of the day, take it all off and go back, get a nice bubble bath, have a nice massage and realise that is not my life. And that feels good.

I do enjoy a level of intensity that I bring when I'm the Demon, but it's a mindset that takes a couple of days to get into; it's not something I can do every day.

I believe in the fact that to portray a character convincingly, you need to live that character, own that character. You have to be earnest with every line that you deliver. However, it doesn't mean that you have to cut off your true self.

One of the most important keys to acting is curiosity. I am curious to the point of being nosy. What that means is you want to devour lives. You're eager to put on their shoes and wear their clothes and have them become a part of you. All people contain mystery, and when you act, you want to plumb that mystery until everything is known to you.

When audiences start calling you by your character's names, your job is done!

'The Machinist' changed me. I learned that I really enjoy, literally, not saying a damned word for days at a time, except for what was in the scene. Whole days of... nothing. Just... standing still. I know a lot of people found it bizarre, because they'd be standing right next to me thinking, 'Why aren't we talking? What's going on?'

I use filming as an excuse to take classes. I got my certification in sailing for 'Wedding Crashers,' and now I can handle a 26-foot boat. I played a seamstress once, so I took sewing classes. I love dipping into these other lives.

Sometimes I've been more emotionally disturbed by the experience of shooting a comedy than a drama. After 'We're the Millers', I think playing this battered loser who's confidence was at zero for 90 percent of the movie, I did genuinely feel that way.

I generally won't do a role unless I feel like it's in my system somewhere, even if it's just a molecule of it. Like I just felt like I knew it and if I talked about it or discussed it or tried to rehearse it that it would take away the energy from that scene so I went in there and just did it.

I'm quite good at switching off and sometimes I forget who I am in a character.

I do a lot of shows I've actually never seen, and I hadn't seen 'Castle' or 'Scandal,' but it's fun to just go into someone's world for eight days and do your thing, and then leave.

I don't call myself a method actor, but the thing is, when you meet Reynolds Woodcock, who is always Reynolds Woodcock, you kind of are Alma, and you kind of become Alma all the time. I think after the first day, Vicky was going, 'Oh gosh.' It was so intense, and I couldn't understand why it was so intense.

I've been acting a long time, and I can play a Cockney gangster or a womanizer in my sleep or standing on my head. But what I try to do is I try to find characters that are as far away from me as I possibly can and then make them real. A French Nazi is about as far away from me as I can possibly get without actually going to Mars or something.

While playing complex characters you're staying in the same place but you're departing with your mind and soul and educating yourself until you can really understand such huge worlds. Those are the roles that keep loyal to the authenticity of what people are, and not caricatures. It's something that requires me to prepare for three, four months. I love the process of it, rather than, "Okay, I'm ready, I'm set with the wardrobe that somebody else chose for me."

My first day on set [Bad Santa 2] was with Billy [Bob Tornton] and it was a sex scene in a Christmas tree lot and you know in order to make it great for the audience you just have to go for it! It was our sort of our icebreaker. There is something very freeing and fun about just playing make believe and it's just over the top and hilarious so you just go for it.

I don't take pressure. I can't really work under pressure. I do one film at a time, and I try to live in that character and in the moment. I am not a futuristic person who thinks what is going to happen after five years. And I don't live in the past.

I like when you watch a film and you feel like you're a part of somebody's life for an hour and a half.

It is true that I do not wear shoes as the host of 'Bunk.' I want 'Bunk' to feel like there's a slight possibility that a confident homeless man just wondered into the studio and started hosting a game show.

Some actors pride themselves on disappearing into a role. I'm into the game because I like experiencing and exploring themes, so I put a lot of myself into the person.

I bring so much of myself to each character that there's always a worrying point when I think: 'Oh no, I'm really that person.'

I'm a Method actor. I spent years training for the drinking and carousing I had to do in this film.

When you're acting, you do have to prepare yourself for doing that. You have to leave behind - or you try and leave behind - anything that's going on in your personal life.