A Quote by Viola Davis
Well, first of all, you read the script a million times. Because what the script gives you are given circumstances. Given circumstances are all the facts of your character.
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Coming from the theater, you know what your given circumstances are every night and who your character is. You're reenacting this one moment of their lives over and over, so you get really good at figuring out how to navigate it. TV was a huge adjustment for me because the script changes every episode, and you have a different set of circumstances.
I think your text [script] is everything; it's what informs you; it's what gives you the given circumstances. Then you take that and you add your own creativity and your own spin on things and you make it personal. That's what makes that character and that text unique to you, when you personalize it. I think that's where your job as an actor comes in.
The "magic if" is a tool invented by Stanislavski, the father of acting craft, is to help an actor make appropriate choices. Essentially, the "magic if" refers to the answer to the question, "What would I do if I were this character in this situation?" Note that the question is not "What would I do if I were in this situation?" What you would do may be very different from what the character would do. Your job, based on your analysis of the script, the scene, and the given circumstances regarding the who of your character, is to decide what he or she would do.
If I read the right script, if that script needs $5 million, if that script needs $50 million, I don't care. If I read a project that's beautiful, that I really want to make, whatever it needs, it needs.
There are no books in this world that everybody must read, but only books that a person must read at a certain time in a given place under given circumstances and at a given period of his life.
Definitely the script because you want to be part of an interesting story, you want your character to be a challenge, then comes the director. But essentially it's the script first and whether it's a character that you think you can do.
When I first heard the 'Urumi' script, I was surprised, shocked, and excited. It was a strong script with a reference to the past. It had fact mixed with fiction. To incorporate facts into a film and introduce fictional characters was interesting. I loved the script.
Any good movie or script usually, if they're doing their job, gives the highest platform possible for an actor to leap off of, and that script was very high up there. It was a very smart, tight script. There was a lot of improv, as well, once we got to the set, but a lot of the original script was also in there.
When you first read a script is the purest moment. That's when you can understand how an audience will ultimately receive it. The first reading of the script is so important because you're experiencing it all for the first time, and it's then that you really know if it's going to work or not.
I don't think I had a script on 'King Kong.' But usually you read a script and then you go and audition for it. It's rare when there's no script. I sort of like the latter better, because I'm more successful at it.
When you start out as an actor, you read a script thinking of it at its best. But that's not usually the case in general, and usually what you have to do is you have to read a script and think of it at its worst. You read it going, "OK, how bad could this be?" first and foremost. You cannot make a good film out of a bad script. You can make a bad film out of a good script, but you can't make a good film out of a bad script.
Normally, when I read a script, it takes me two and a half hours. I usually put it down and come back to it. So, I know if I can read a script in one sitting, it's a fantastic script.
As we were negotiating, I didn't have a script. Once the deal is closed, they let you read the script. So, I got the script and was reading it like, "Oh, please be good!," because I'd already signed on the dotted line. And I read it and just went, "Okay, I'm going to be okay. Thank god!" It was a really funny, moving story.
To change your circumstances, first start thinking differently. Do not passively accept unsatisfactory circumstances, but form a picture in your mind of circumstances as they should be. Believe and succeed.
In reviewing films, people get quite liberal about saying "the script" this and "the script" that, when they've never read the script any more than they've read the latest report on Norwegian herring landings.
Sometimes I will read the whole script just to see what my character is doing, but I won't touch a script that I'm not in because it's just so much more exciting as a fan to me to watch the show as it's happening.
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