I'm looking for all quotes available about acting and his take on it (approach and etc)


I'd appreciate some helpt

Are you the same talli who posts on Nolan Fans?

I'd check out any interviews with Heath on here for quotes, although the only ones I'm remembering offhand had to do with playing the Joker.

yup.... i am!

i guess we'll never know what his process was


I do find it intriguing that he said he finally understood what to do only while he was making Parnassus. And in a way I think that's one of his finest performances. Even though, its not a heartfelt one, from the perspective of acting, he does so many interesting subtle nuanced things in it.

Hey Talli:
I always was interested in his process, too . . . but he never really did spell it out. I don't think he liked to try to verbalize it or it might become "over-thought-out", if that makes any sense.

I do have some quotes, but I'll have to go searching for them. It'll take a while, because I'm in my last quarter at uni, and that's always the most intense one. I am incorporating quotes into the new site design, that I hope to have up within a couple of weeks... so that should help...

Again, welcome to HH. And so sorry I've been so awol lately.,..

(Oh, I'm gonna move this topic to general Heath discussion.)

yeah i picked up on bits and pieces....from interviews for various movies


he reads the script a lot

he figures out the breathing pattern of the character which also relates to the vocal rhythm of the character, and movement...and he finds the physicality of the character by walking around and trying to find the right walk and posture

he likes to use imagination to create feelings...like in Dark Knight he imagined having raw meat in his mouth to give him a certain feeling of "evil"


some of the stuff sounds a lot like Michael Chekhov Technique.


thanks for the help...i'd love to see a section of heath's quotes on acting.

I had not seen that one. Do you know where it's from?

I do know he did not take formal acting training, although later on he did have a coach on set once or twice. Once the film started, he would not pick up the script again. He'd already have what he wanted in mind and not want to be restricted by reading it anymore.
There's one quote that I love . . . because psychologically it's so true, and I think that's what made him so brilliant, his ability to understand all aspects of human nature. That understanding helped him get behind the psychology of a character. He was an extremely compassionate person, and had a vast life experience as well as some early traumas in his life that helped him understand emotions and human needs ... and he approached his characters that way . . . with complete honesty, which is the only way he knew how to be both in his real life and with his acting.

This is one of my favorite quotes he has on acting.

"You don't learn how to act looking in mirrors, you can tell actors who've done that. It's dangerous, because acting is not about what your face is doing. If you act face first then you've worked out your face, but not the true thoughts inside. I work from inside out - thoughts and emotions first, and then the face follows."

Oh, and here's the quote I was referring to earlier.

"I'm pretty good at dropping a character once it's over for the day. Certainly once the film is over, I throw it all away. Your life is what matters."

To him acting was about self-expression, so even when it was exaggerated, there were aspects of himself he'd draw on. Self expression is freeing . . . and once he accomplished it, he was able to drop the character, and be completely sated and freed by the experience.

yeah...i think somebody like george clooney probably learned to act by watching himsef...cause he essentially plays the same person everytime, just different profession, different circumstances...but he's always expressing himself through the same shtick of his


and the thing about the Raw Meat was from various interviews with Heath on the dark knight....Most recently I seen it in a FHM interview about the joker role.

I remember he also mentioned looking at Ventriloquist dummies, for the kind of hollowness his voice would have as the joker.


and I do agree that great acting is self expression....but its not expressing the everyday you. Our real "I" only shows flashes of itself in our everyday life. It's much bigger than we consciously observe it to be. That's why when actors like depp, heath, oldman, dafoe gain access to it they can do so many different things and go to places that vary immensely from each other.

Tom Cruise & Brad Pitt, too . . . LOL
Clooney, at least he's found his niche, so he kinda sticks to the same guy "type" of roles. The other two, they keep trying to think they're "varied" and mixing it up, but . . . Cruise, always Tom Cruise. Pitt, always satisfactory, but mediocre and bland. He's a "mirror" actor, from the outside in . . . and every time I'd read that quote from Heath, I'd think instantly of Brad. LOL

Oh yes, acting is more than putting yourself in . . . but the only way you know to be angry is how you are angry, etc . . . you may alter it, exaggerate it, twist it in some way to meet the character's requirements . . . so that it does appear different from you, but your initial knowledge how to "play" angry, is only from how you would feel. So there's always you in there. . .even if it's small and hidden. I believe Heath made a similar statement once, but I have no idea where.

The thing about Heath is that he had so many more experiences than many his age, and had such a wide understanding of human nature and emotions . . . he had more to draw from.

I don't think you can act unless you have "felt".
I recently came across a troll who kept using that old Plato Quote: "Never trust an actor, because his profession is deceit".
I disagree. Especially with Heath. An actor's profession is not deceit. The really good ones . . . their profession is honesty.

Gee, I think I know that troll . I have given that quote a lot of thought (don't know why we let trolls rent space in our heads though) and I think it does speak to an unaccomplished and beginning actor. I can remember high school drama class-you "play" a character. It is about pretending and deceit-"the face". You are essentially pretending to be someone else.

But then you have your truly gifted actors. They essentially bring life to a soul on a page. Just as Heath did, he gave a body and voice to a character in type. I think of Ennis. I have read Annie's short story several times and had the experience of reading it before I saw BBM. In reading, I didn't really connect with any of the characters. However, we all agree that Heath brought Ennis to life. He really gave that character a personality and soul of his own. In watching that film, we really grieve and ache for him-moreso than any of the others. Heath is the only actor that I perceive consistently brings a character to life. You can't do that if you're "playing" a character-it has to begin with an honest examination of the emotion deep inside oneself. I can't imagine how exhausting that level drawing on oneself must be, yet freeing at the same time.

BTW:Welcome talli! Awesome discussion. I can't wait to hear more of your thoughts on Heath's work.

Yeah, I often hear the same thing from people @Phyllis. They're impression is that acting is deceiving people. And that most people act in everyday life.

My response to that was that what people do in everyday life is actually the opposite of acting. They were social masks. They are very careful about what they present to the world because they want to control how people view them and what they think of them. And to act, you have to remove those masks and give all of you to the world. Its a giving thing and comes from a place of love. Which is why when you hear Heath's friends talk about how giving he was as a man, it makes perfect sense for him to be so good.


The breathing thing has been really on my mind lately. You always hear people say "oh, that actor breathed life into that character" when describing a good performance and i used to just take it as one of "those" expressions that people say, a mere figure of speech. But recently, I watched Gary Oldman in The book of Eli, and the very first thing I noticed about his character was the way he would breathe. It was like evil was coming off of his bottom lip. The air that he was breathing seemed evil. I was blown away. And now Heath saying that he likes to figure out how to breathe as the character, its making me realize that its much more literary than i had assumed. It actually IS breathing life into the character in every literary sense. Maybe that's where the expression came from, originally, but we are now so accustomed to using it that we dont bother to acknowledge it's true implications. We see an actor bringing real flesh to a character, and subconsciously we see this "breathing life into the character" but consciously we are not aware, and our automatic response is that figure of speech.


By the way, even though Cruise, Pitt, and Clooney act as themselves, I still cant help but enjoy they're performances. I think that new comedy Cruise has coming out looks hilarious. His dead pan has me dying.

Yes, and Heath had been using the Alexander Technique, which specifically deals with how we breathe and hold our bodies to help us deal with back pain, etc . . . and it's also used by actors to help them become more aware of how they breathe and move.


Well, as much as I hate to admit it, I do still watch Tom Cruise's films. Honestly, I detest the man, and won't give him one red cent of my money, but he still makes interesting choices for work. I'll watch Pitt in some things, but not all his body of work interests me anymore, although I used to watch everything he was in. Clooney, I watch most stuff, because he does what he does so well . . . Kinda like Cary Grant, who was one of my favorites. Let's face it, Grant was pretty much always Cary Grant. But he did it so well. LOL

I also echo WM's comments. When I opened the HH forum, it was my hope that we'd have intelligent discussions on Heath's characters and films. I don't have as much time anymore to engage in them, but that's the level of discourse I'd love for us to have. Thanks bunches.

Such an interesting topic!

I remember reading in Empire about how Heath likened the evil he portayed in the joker to eating meat.

I've found a few of the quotes from that interview that touch on this and also his preparation for the role:

"Its a combination of reading all the comic books i could that were relevant to the script and then just closing my eyes and meditating on it. I sat around in a hotel room in London for about a month, locked myself away, formed a little diary and experimented with voices - it was important to try to find a somewhat iconic voice and laugh. I ended up landing more in the realm of a psychopath - someone with very little to no conscience towards his acts. Hes just an absolute sociopath, a cold-blooded, mass-murdering clown, and Chris has given me free reign, which is fun, because there are no real boundaries to what The Joker would say or do. Nothing Intimidates him, and everything is a big joke"

"I think we have that in all of us" Ledger muses, before attempting to describe the physicality of inhabiting his and Nolans vision of The Joker : "Its kind of like eating raw meat. What that does to your mouth and your eyes, simple little visual things like that. I dont know - i guess the rest is just trusting your research."

I also remember seeing an interview on youtube when talks about Candy and how he tried to understand the addiction to heroine. He says

"What I would always think of is when you are really parched or really thirsty and you need a drink of water, it's kind of a very similar kind of urge. It's like instinctual, it's in your blood, you need it or else you are going to die, or so I've been told."

As you guys say, he seemed to draw on his own experiences and take whatever he could to really try and feel the emotion or the part that he played. It's so interesting you talk about actors as liars as opposed to truth tellers. With Heath there is no doubt everything he did came from place of truth. The fact he drew on his own experiences and really did so much research for each character shows this. Personally, that's the reason I think so many people were drawn to him. You believed what he said and did in his films, because he believed it too. You can see the truth in his eyes.

Another great quote is:

I don't have a technique. I've never been a believer in having one set technique on how to act. There are no rules and there is no rulebook. At the end of the day, it all comes down to my instincts. That's the one thing that guides me through every decision professionally. Socially, also. That's my technique. Yeah, you read through the script 100 times. I guess I have little characteristics about myself. Sometimes, most often than not, once we start shooting I won't look at the script at all until we finished shooting. It's kind of like it's been imprinted in my head during rehearsals. You just let it go.
As quoted by Reel.com (May 2001)

Naomi, those are FABULOUS quotes! I had read some of the Empire quotes in the past but, to see them in isolation really makes them more powerful. I love and wholeheartedly agree with your statement "You believed what he said and did in his films because he believed it too. You can see the truth in his eyes."

yeah i had a 4 week intro to Alexander Technique, I see its usefulness in performance because it allows you a way to make your body relaxed and ready to carry out your impulses.




awesome quotes....thanks a lot


its too bad we'll never know what he discovered about his process during the shoot of parnassus since he told his agent that that was when he finally understood how to act

Great topic and fantastic replies! I hadnt seen some of these. I've always found it fascinating how actors prepare for roles (and how movies are made), and more than anything i was really hoping i'd know a little more about how Heath nailed the Joker the way he did.

But the raw meat comment is quite fascinating. I would never think of doing anything like that! i guess that's why he was such a brilliant actor and i'm not