improvisation in acting Quotes

As an actor timing is important, especially as a mother with small children, so a lot is chance.

In a lot of movies, honestly, the directors don't talk to you that much. Maybe they say, "Faster, slower," whatever. Sometimes they give you little adjustments, because sometimes you want to start out neutral, but a lot of times you wind up directing yourself anyway, just doing what you think is the right thing to do.

I don't believe that you can give the same performance every take. It's physically impossible, so why bother? If you don't do what is happening at that moment, then it's not real. Then you're holding something back.

I think there's a limited amount of planning you can do, at least in the position I'm in. Maybe more successful actors can plan more than I'm able to.

Much of what you do as an actor - it's who's around you, what's the environment, where do you fit into this thing. That's really work that's impossible to do on your own, at least for me. I find it hard to pre-plan every element of everything I do. It's not my thing.

It's rare that I've read a script where I'm like, "Oh, my god, it's hilarious!" All you want is a good skeleton and good characters. Then, you can go, "Okay, I can bring a lot to this. I can improvise and I can create something out of this."

The script is a starting point, not a fixed highway. I must look through the camera to see if what I've written on the page is right or not. In the script, you describe imagined scenes, but it's all suspended in mid-air. Often, an actor viewed against a wall or a landscape, or seen through a window, is much more eloquent than the lines you've given him. So then you take out the lines. This happens often to me and I end up saying what I want with a movement or a gesture.