Acting is the most communicative thing I can imagine doing.
What I've learned about acting is that it needs to be mysterious. If you overthink how a beat needs to be played, it can trip you up.
Half of acting is you're very intimidated, overcoming your fears, letting yourself be vulnerable in front of people and that sort of stuff.
I started classes and it wasn't because I was like, 'I want to be an actor!' - I was really interested in the theory of what acting can be and what it's about. It's all about living in the moment and kind of being present, which is something that at that time in my life I really wanted to explore.
From the very start, if there was a spotlight, I would step into it. My parents wondered what to do with this insufferable show-off. They chose acting for me, and I'm very grateful I can still make a living from it.
I think 'method acting' is a widely abused term.
I left the Gaiety School of Acting in Dublin in 2004, and I did five years of theater after that.
That is one of the reasons one enjoys acting. Now and again, you get scenes where you work with somebody really good and you have a good time trying to make it really work and really work well.
So anyway, I've learned a lot about myself just in terms of acting but just work ethic and interesting things like full-page monologues or talking straight into camera, which I had never gotten to do before.
I've done quite a few adverts. I've also done some presenting and acting work in Spain. I did a lot of Spanish education videos for people wanting to learn English.
Maybe subconsciously I've kept activism separate from acting because it's important to me in a more profound way.
Starting at age four, my mom decided that she was not going to have an idle child in the house. So I started taking dance lessons on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and then I was in acting classes on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, and I was also modeling on Saturdays. And that was my childhood.
I started acting professionally at age 19.
You don't have any kind of sense of being foolish when you are acting. When you're younger you don't want to look a fool, so you don't do things that might make you vulnerable.
I've always felt if my nose were more crooked, critics would focus more on my acting.
I will do whatever is necessary to make better the stupidity on my part - and therefore go after those who are acting stupid themselves. It's not popular. You don't make friends when you do that. And I couldn't care less.
But most of what I've learned about acting - and a lot of what I've learned about life in the past seven years - was taught to me by Robert Altman.
I will always be an actress. I couldn't see myself without acting. But I'd love to direct and keep writing. I don't think one has to be in place of the other.
Logotherapy sees the human patient in all his humanness. I step up to the core of the patient's being. And that is a being in search of meaning, a being that is transcending himself, a being capable of acting in love for others.
Anyone that has a music career and an acting career I think is pretty fantastic.
When it comes to acting, you really have to create movement which in some ways is dancing. And dancing, I feel is very important to act as well. I wouldn't put one over the other.
I've always said that acting found me. I didn't really find it.
Before acting, I wanted to become a journalist. I also toyed with the idea of being a chef - but that's only when people asked me what I wanted to be. In fact, I always used to say I wanted to be an actor, but I didn't ever believe that I was good enough to be come one.
Everything else - music, cinematography, costumes, design, acting - can be judged at face value. But when you're looking at editing, you don't know what the totality of the material was, and you don't know the working dynamic between a director and an editor - whether the editor was micromanaged or given free rein. It's very difficult.
I kind of fell into acting. I was very lucky.
I like finding stuff that I suck at and trying to get better. So I'm taking classes, getting myself comfortable in an acting scene. You've got to work out those ticks. For instance, standing up used to be really hard for me. I act much better if I'm sitting down.
Stage acting is for me the basic form of acting. If you make films all the time, you have so few possibilities to rehearse. And it's important to rehearse, because it gives you the possibility to try things which are not good!
It strikes me that these days, clubs don't even want players who can truly play any more; they just want athletes, quick guys who don't have a football brain, can just run and run; some of them, Jesus. I can never imagine acting like that.
People who think radio acting is easy are wrong, because you got nothing to work with but your voice.
We are a typical working class northern family, big into our football... no one in the family was into acting. But I remember seeing a panto when I was about six and thinking, 'Yeah... I wouldn't mind doing that.'
I started being interested in acting when I heard the voices of Sir Laurence Olivier and Sir John Gielgud and Sir Alec Guinness. I've had the great privilege of working with Sir Derek Jacobi and Sir Anthony Hopkins. These are people who inspire the work that I do.
Acting in film, you know, I hear all the time, people say 'You did so much better than I thought you would.' So there's an added element of surprise in film, different than in music.
I'm not an acting monk or anything. I'm not, like, the most well-adjusted actor.
A musical would be fantastic. The soundtrack would be great and I'd like to do acting.
I don't know if acting is genetic. Maybe it's environmental.
It dawned on me that acting was what I wanted to do with my life. Nothing had ever touched my heart like acting did.
