I spent lunchtime in a grave during the filming of 'Bloody Mama.' When you're younger, you feel that's what you need to do to help you stay in character. When you get older, you become more confident and less intense about it - and you can achieve the same effect.
Interpretation
The quote reflects an actor's evolving approach to character immersion over time.
Robert De Niro shares his experience of how, in his younger years, he felt the need to fully immerse himself in a role to stay in character, even to the extreme of spending time in a grave. As he aged, he grew more confident and realized that he could achieve depth in his performances without such intense measures, highlighting a transition from reliance on extreme methods to a more nuanced understanding of acting.
In practice
In a discussion about method acting at a film festival.
You never know what you do that could be totally out of left field, which actually might work and give something fresh to the whole scene, to the character, whatever. If you have that with a director who then knows how to shape it, either in the direction, in the moment, or in the editing, then that's good.
I think Hollywood has a class system. The actors are like the inmates, but the truth is they're running the asylum.
The mind of a writer can be a truly terrifying thing. Isolated, neurotic, caffeine-addled, crippled by procrastination, consumed by feelings of panic, self-loathing, and soul-crushing inadequacy. And that’s on a good day.
If you're an actor, always be true to your character. If you are not an actor, have character and always be true to yourself.
Only through art can we emerge from ourselves and know what another person sees.
Emerald as heavy as a golf course, ruby as dark as an afterbirth, diamond as white as sun on the sea.
When I am writing best, I really am lost in my world. I lose track of the outside world. I have a difficult time balancing between my real world and the artificial world.
The painting rises from the brushstrokes as a poem rises from the words. The meaning comes later.
The only story that seems worth writing is a cry, a shot, a scream. A story should break the reader's heart.
I just feel that 'The Color Purple,' which was my 10th book, was a true gift from my ancestors.
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