As an actor, I have to watch people and observe their behaviors - this is how I create characters.
I always give one actor an emotion to make it very easy so he or she can root to it.
I am a really writer-oriented actor.
The difference between a movie star and a movie actor is this - a movie star will say, 'How can I change the script to suit me?' and a movie actor will say. 'How can I change me to suit the script?'
I've always tried to be an actor who. . . I just plod on and try to keep my mouth shut, mind my own business. I find the whole thing about people's lives. . . I can't understand it. I'm always astonished that people want to know anything about me.
It's better to find a stunt person who can act. It's easier to do that than to find an actor who can do a stunt.
An actor knows two important things - to be honest in what he is doing and to be in touch with the audience. That's not bad advice for a politician either.
I'm an actor. I'm trying to be the character and do what they're doing.
When audiences look at an action actor like myself, sometimes we are very easily stereotyped or characterized as one type. They forget that we are actors, too.
What you always try to do, as an actor, is find the thing that's universal in the person.
That's one of the fun parts of becoming an actor: You can become whoever you want to be.
I've played an awful lot of people that other people would call villains, but that isn't a very helpful attitude to have if you're about to play them. They are just people, and they may do dreadful things and say dreadful things, but your job as an actor is to know why they do them or say them.
I think that it's much easier for a recording artist to become an actor than for an actor to become a recording artist.
I don't just act, and that's really important to me. I don't want to just be an actor forever. I want to score movies. I could be an actor first, but I don't only want to be an actor.
The most intoxicating thing about being an actor is to surrender to a story that you never would have come up with.
They're a handful, but Emily deals with that all the time and, as an actor, I deal with that all the time, so you just ignore it. When Julia [Jones] first came on set, she was like, "How do you deal with it?," and I told her, "You just tune it out after awhile. " They were competing with each other, doing push-ups and just being ridiculous, so you just have to zone out.
What actor wouldn't want to work with Mel Gibson?
He's hard-core, but I think he's actually more of an actor.
I am an actor and of course I respond very positively to flattery.
It's a difficult thing as an actor not to repeat one's self.
