A Quote by Gina Rodriguez

I've learned a lot about what kind of actor I want or do not want to be while being on set. I sit back and observe how other actors treat the totem pole of set politics. — © Gina Rodriguez
I've learned a lot about what kind of actor I want or do not want to be while being on set. I sit back and observe how other actors treat the totem pole of set politics.
I don't want to be like the actor who rehearses everything in the bathroom, then comes to the set and carries on completely uninterrupted while the other actors tiptoe away. I'm so dependent on reacting to the other actors on the set, and to the director. I'm very responsive. I react. And I treasure the energy that reaction gives. I feed off that and work off that. I don't like to be too prepared, no. However we define too prepared, if I feel it's getting that way, then I'll back off. My line-learning is very special. I like to learn the dialogue of the whole film before I arrive.
I don't want to be like the actor who rehearses everything in the bathroom, then comes to the set and carries on completely uninterrupted while the other actors tiptoe away.
'Cavemen' was obviously a big opportunity. I learned a lot about how to act and about the politics of being on a set every day. Like, who do you have to listen to and who you don't have to listen to.
You've got to understand that in Bollywood, every actor is an instrument, and yet a human being. They come to the set with a set agenda, believing, 'This is who I am, this is what I want, and no, I am not going to become that character you want me to.'
I set goals, but they're mostly very personal goals. I never try and set a goal where 'I want to win this,' or 'I want to do this,' where other people can affect what I do. If I want to swim a new best time, I sit down and work out the best way of doing that. Whether I can shave a few tenths of a second off a turn or the start, my goal is putting them all together in a race. That's the way I set my goals.
I learned a lot from Clint [Eastwood], who's an extremely economic director. I learned a lot from Michael Winterbottom, who really gave a lot of trust in the actors and allowed them to live in the space instead of trying to manipulate and make it too set and too staged. Working with [Robert] De Niro taught me a lot of being an actors' director and what that is. I've learned a lot from pretty much everybody. Hopefully I've picked up something from everybody I've worked with.
I definitely isolate, but I also always have people in front of me, and I have to be OK with that. I'm in a business where, on the set, you're around two hundred people every day, and if you're high on the call sheet, you sort of set the tone for the set. And you want people to feel appreciated, and you want to ask them how their kids are. You want to talk to people and invest in them and let them know that they're appreciated and heard. But then I do like to just kind of withdraw.
Interestingly, I'm more closed on set than I am off set. On set, I'm closed. I don't want input. I want to concentrate on what I'm doing with this other person. But outside of that, I'm open. I'm everybody's friend, unless they don't like me.
'Divorce' was kind of strange because I was going in and out of doing it while doing different movies! So, I kept returning to a set character and this set gig, and that was kind of interesting for me as an actor.
A lot of people when they make movies, the actors act like it's their journey and that everyone is on the set to facilitate their journey and the whole thing is set up that way - they ask if you want anything.
I realize I have a lot of amazing opportunities, but I don't know how you can play a human being going through real human experiences without being able to walk down the street. If you can't live a real life, how do you play a real person? It always confuses me when actors work back-to-back-to-back with no break. If you live your life on a film set, how the hell can you relate to real people? You don't know what its like to not have people fussing over you all day, and that's not life - that's silly movies. I will always want to take breaks and I wouldn't be OK with losing that.
What actor doesn't want to walk around a set and be called 'Mr. President?' Playing POTUS is a kind of rite of passage among American actors - our version of playing Hamlet.
I think, like a lot of actors and people in the arts who are struggling to get where they want to be, you spend a lot of time sitting around grumbling about how you're not doing the kind of work you really want to do. But there's a lot of complacency in that, too.
I'm always going to feel like the underdog. I feel like that's the kind of mind-set I want to have and if I do lose that mind-set, I want somebody to slap me in the face and say, 'Hey, pick it up and get back to the roots.'
The reason that I'm here is that Patrick and I are partners and when crazy stuff comes our way we'll sit down and brainstorm and think around it just like we do when we're thinking about a scene. So, while the masters might not understand my being here, or at least they didn't at first, but they do now because we really are a partnership. If he's on set I'm on set.
There's kind of a Zen aspect to bowling. The pins are either staying up or down before you even throw your arm back. It's kind of a mind-set. You want to be in this perfect mind-set before you released the ball.
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