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Actors are sensitive freaks, but it amazes me that it is something that I haven't improved on over the years.
Katherine Waterston
I didn't find it difficult to live in the 'Inherent Vice' world or play those scenes, because they just seemed so real.
I didn't feel a specific pressure to prove myself because I had an actor in the family. I didn't feel that pressure to fill some big shoes or anything.
When you come from a family of actors, people in show business, they really know to celebrate good news and to celebrate it hard because it's not every day that you get it.
I was barely in 'Taking Woodstock.'
I love that feeling. I guess I love escaping my life, really. I love going into another world and feeling for this amount of time that this is it, this is the world I'm going to live in. You feel it more during the rehearsal process.
When you are the kid of an actor, it's always a very inviting world. Everyone is nice to you, the hair and make-up people braid your hair and play with you, and the costume department makes outfits for your teddy bears.
I think it's quite common for actors to almost rely on their characters to exercise parts of themselves in their regular life they don't tend to explore so much.
I feel a kind of permission and freedom in my work that I might not allow myself in my real life.
When 'The Master' came around, they said they wanted to try and find a part for me, and I got a text from the casting director saying that.
We live in such hypersexualised yet totally prudish times. People have this expectation about everyone else's relationship to their own bodies.'Surely you must have shame about your body? Surely what's scariest for you as actor would be to stand in a room naked?' Believe me, I've been in so many more terrifying situations as a performer than that.
Usually on films, you get used to kind of being told, 'This is what you're going to wear, this is what you're going to hold, and remember, you're lucky to be here, and shut up.'
When I go to see a movie, I never think about all the people it took to make it.
Shower scenes are great. Janet Leigh never took a shower again in her life after 'Psycho'.
Costume design is so important and really helpful, and I really love that aspect of character development, just figuring it out.
I think I really would have quit if I hadn't gotten 'Inherent Vice'. Or maybe I would have just shriveled up and died.
I don't think Paul Thomas Anderson has a standard approach to anything.
I generally don't like to talk too much about the character unless I feel stuck or in some trouble.
Sometimes we'll walk into a set, and I'll think, 'Oh, this film doesn't look like this.' You know, 'cause I read the script, and I saw it in my head in some other way. Which is a lot like what happens when they're writing a movie that's based on a book - I'm like, 'Ah! He doesn't have a beard.' You have these visions in your head about it.
People think the advantage of a parent in the business is that they'll open doors for you. But the true advantage for me is having someone who knows exactly what you're going through.
It's very easy to think that the way things are is the way things will stay, and life just isn't like that.
Being interviewed is an odd experience for me because I was an actor a long time before anyone ever asked me a question about myself. When I started being interviewed, I definitely felt I was being asked to defend or explain myself.
I find life so shocking in general. Everything about it surprises me.
It's just a dream of the struggling actor to just have a proper shot - not just in a film that people will see, but with a character that's rich and complicated and that you can show you're capable of taking on.
Sometimes you meet people, and you somehow feel like you've known them your whole life.
There are people who have really high expectations for what we're doing. I have to not think about that so that I can be free and play around every day and not feel like I have to get it right. You want to be loose.
What appeals about the '70s is the celebration of the female form, the lack of constriction.
I think everything happens organically. You mine for clues. It's all immersive, and stuff you can use comes out of that immersion. I don't really like to wear wigs in movies because I like to look like the character all the time.
You kind of wake up in the morning, and you don't see anybody but these actors until you go home at night and pass out and do it again. So it's structured a lot like the process when you're making a film. You just kind of get in that tunnel vision. I like that. I like when the rest of the world kind of quiets.
I guess whatever the director's energy is is kind of contagious on set, because, um, you know, it's a hierarchy, and we're all kind of looking to the director for guidance.
I'm constantly struggling in interviews to engage and finish sentences, because I am being asked personal questions from somebody I don't know.
When I got to NYU, I immediately inquired about doing a double major in acting and photography.
I thought acting was what grownups did. It was such a part of my childhood. I was already in love with performing before I knew there were other options. By then, it was too late.
My first memory of the Harry Potter series was my little brother just falling into those books and not resurfacing until he was done. That J.K. Rowling got an entire generation reading is extraordinary - I'm amazed, thrilled, and proud to now be portraying one of that phenomenal writer's characters.
I feel like people assume if a character is very different than you, that means it's difficult to get into their head or into their skin.
Sometimes you find yourself digging around for something useful, and you don't necessarily know what it is until you find it. Sometimes it's a word from a book that you read every day.
I've always enjoyed disappearing into a crowd in New York. As an actor, I love to spy, and it's hard to be a good spy if everyone is looking at you. Also, I'm pretty shy. I don't really like a lot of attention.
Some days, the first coffee just laughs at you. It says, 'Oh, you think I'm going to wake you up? Sucker.'
Seeing someone happy on set is just a very small slice of the reality of an actor's life.
I think it's a luxury when you love the thing you're promoting, and then you don't have to try to think of something, try and find some angle.
I don't like to talk about things unless I have to. I don't like to talk a scene to death or overanalyze it, especially if I feel like I have some way in on my own.
The minute you get cast, you worry they've made the most terrible mistake. There's a really awkward stage between being hired and doing the job when it doesn't feel real.
One of my earliest memories was when I was three, going to this full-length mirror in my parents' bathroom and saying into the mirror, 'You are going to be an actress.'
When you're playing Marilyn Monroe, you have a responsibility to look and sound like her that you don't when you're playing people who weren't ever in the public eye.
There's kind of no rhyme or reason to what is appealing to any given actor. It just is, or it isn't. It's kind of like dating. You either connect to someone or you don't. You can't really say why.
I've always wanted to play the villain. But the young girl is never the villain.
'Inherent Vice' was a novel that already existed, and in 'Steve Jobs', I was playing a real person; in those situations, you do feel an added pressure to please.
I love connecting with a character out of the blue, not knowing why.
There's something particular about the way Los Angeles feels in the summertime. It slows down and is hazy and dreamy, and you can put on certain music and go for a drive and be totally sober but feel stoned.
If you have a famous parent, you know that being famous doesn't make you superior to anyone else. It just means people smile at you more. Everyone was fawning all over my father, but of course, the way you look at your parents when you're a teen is often with a... more critical eye.
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