Our job as actors, especially in front of a camera, is almost like textile artists. We spend so much time getting the right texture of yarn, and working out the color scheme, and binding off the weave, and making it just right.
I became an actor because I love solving problems. I'm a big crossword puzzle person. I love doing research. One of the reasons I became Jewish is because I love text study.
My attitude as an actor, because I'm a stage actor, is whatever the director tells you to do, you try it. You don't resist what a director is giving you.
When you work as a day player on a film or a TV thing, like you're visiting a foreign country, where you know a couple of words of the language and a few of the cultural abnormalities, but basically you're a stranger in a strange land.
There are actors who make no decisions about how to play something until they're in the moment, looking into their scene partner's eyes. So they're completely available for whatever happens. And those are actors who tend to avoid getting into patterns.
I love going into rehearsals day after day for three, four weeks, trying stuff, coming back the next day, building on that. So many times I'd drive home from the studio [after] shooting and I'd be thinking about a certain moment, and I'd think, "Oh, I know what to do!"
