When you have to get into the character each morning, give it your voice, your face, it was torture.

When I said I was going to audition for a film, I got a hearty laugh from all my family.

Acting is the work of two people-it's only possible when you have the complicity, the help, even the manipulation of a director.

On my fifth film, it was then that I stopped dancing.

My only friends were boys, and I was just one more of them.

I had to gain weight until I looked like a seal so I could compete with the real whores who played the other roles. I was fat as a barrel.

For most of my career, I've played roles that were written for other actresses.

My first vocation was dance.

I'm a small and normal girl, and stories like mine no one likes to tell. Fortunately so, because I wouldn't like to play myself.

The film kept me from working as a secretary. It was a real stroke of luck. A miracle.

I went to dance classes from 9 in the morning until 1, then to school from 3 to 10 at night, always under the threat that if I failed a single course I could forget about dancing.

People love coming on television, even if they have to show their miseries.

Keep your ears open, your eyes open, grab everything you can, react, and learn!

When you have to get into the character each morning, give it your voice, your face, it was torture.

The director had come to Madrid to court me.

There's nothing more human than two people making love.

You can fake your age or mask it, but the passion that moves the characters has to be real.

The actress they'd hired had refused to appear naked in front of the camera. I didn't like to appear naked either, but the first thing I did was take off my clothes and jump into the pool completely naked.

My current companion, Gerard de Battista, is the father of my two sons.

I'd heard it was dangerous to walk around Miami.

I chose the most explosive dress I could find. I put a ton of makeup on and some great round earrings. I looked like Jennifer Jones in Duel in the Sun.

I really wanted to work and become independent.

I like men with some belly who are a little over the hill.

Compared to dancing, films seemed to me to be the work of lay bums. There was no physical pain; it was enough to say and imagine what was in the script. It was very easy for me.

Psychiatrists don't solve anything from one day to the next.

The director took my face in his hands and asked me to show him my teeth, as with a horse. This happened on a Wednesday, and by the following Monday I was shooting.

Acting is the work of two people - it's only possible when you have the complicity, the help, even the manipulation of a director.

I didn't go to school a lot.

In this watering-place I acted an heroic character, badly studied; and being a novice on such a stage, I forgot my part before a pair of lovely blue eyes.

I do like to embed a fictional character firmly in an occupation.

But even with a character like Cary who is relatively outlandish, at the end of the movie he's in a place where I wouldn't have expected him to be - taking on the responsibility of a woman who is pregnant and who used to be his best friend's wife.

Always, your work is the same: You have to tell a story, you have to make a character. It doesn't matter if there are thousands of dollars, millions behind it, or if there is nothing.

Each of us is meant to have a character all our own, to be what no other can exactly be, and do what no other can exactly do.

I liked Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer, and that is the kind of character that I would like to have played. That would have been more in tune with who I really was.

It's the difficulty we had with Mr. Bean, actually, when it went from TV to film. You certainly discover that you need to explain more about a character.

In a lot of ways, the make-up was the character.

The more we study the Indian's character the more we appreciate the marked distinction between the civilized being and the real savage.

So many people have said that to me, that what they really like about Alex is what she brings out in Marissa, and what this situation brings out in her, a hint of happiness and another side to her character.

I've been on the show for six years and I don't even know what her history is. I sort of make things up in my mind, but I think it's hard for an audience to follow and invest in a character when they don't have the details.

It is not true that drink changes a man's character. It may reveal it more clearly.

Because I killed a guy in real life, and because my character kills a guy onstage, they said I could never do anything this great again. I resented that.

Well, I go to the theater today, and its curtain - there is no curtain in this play; the lights go down and go up - and we start. And I live this character for two hours. There are only two of us in the play. And It's a complete experience.

I just kind of understood it, and I threw my love for others and love for life into the character, and was having a blast. I loved playing Dharma. I loved it!

I think if you play a character that is fearless, then it's boring. I think that's what was so incredible about Harrison Ford, is that he always seemed like he was never going to survive it, he's always scared, and yet he always does survive it somehow.

If you look to lead, invest at least 40% of your time managing yourself - your ethics, character, principles, purpose, motivation, and conduct. Invest at least 30% managing those with authority over you, and 15% managing your peers.

Every character I play has to be the hero of his own story, the way we're all heroes of our own lives.

To be a character who feels a deep emotion, one must go into the memory's vault and mix in a sad memory from one's own life.

Character is power; it makes friends, draws patronage and support and opens the way to wealth, honor and happiness.

You have to understand the tone of the movie, because if it's supposed to be funny, it can be funny violent like the Home Alone stuff, but you have to really understand the tone of what you're doing and make the action work for that and for the character.