I was barely in 'Taking Woodstock.'
Katherine Waterston
Sometimes you find yourself digging around for something useful, and you don't necessarily know what it is until you find it. Sometimes it's a word from a book that you read every day.
When 'The Master' came around, they said they wanted to try and find a part for me, and I got a text from the casting director saying that.
I've always enjoyed disappearing into a crowd in New York. As an actor, I love to spy, and it's hard to be a good spy if everyone is looking at you. Also, I'm pretty shy. I don't really like a lot of attention.
All acting is nudity. It's all vulnerable - and a little bit scary.
I love connecting with a character out of the blue, not knowing why.
I think it's quite common for actors to almost rely on their characters to exercise parts of themselves in their regular life they don't tend to explore so much.
If you have a famous parent, you know that being famous doesn't make you superior to anyone else. It just means people smile at you more. Everyone was fawning all over my father, but of course, the way you look at your parents when you're a teen is often with a... more critical eye.
I was devastated when they stopped making sailors' pants with bell bottoms. There's something sort of spirited about the way they affected a man's gait. They project something good-natured.
About 10 minutes before I found out that I had landed 'Fantastic Beasts', I got a residual check in the mail for zero dollars. On the check it said 'Advice Slip.' And I was like, 'Well, what's the advice? Go into another line of work?
That period between finishing the film and opening night is agonising. That's part of why actors go from job to job - so they don't have to live with the anxiety in the interim.
I really love fashion, but I feel like the older I get, the more I am drawn to the basic things in my daily life because everything else is so goofy and crazy.
The best way to honor real people when you play them is to try to tell the story of their dynamics and the struggles that they're dealing with rather than lose sight of the connections and personal relationships, and do a really good job at an accent.
There's something particular about the way Los Angeles feels in the summertime. It slows down and is hazy and dreamy, and you can put on certain music and go for a drive and be totally sober but feel stoned.
One of my earliest memories was when I was three, going to this full-length mirror in my parents' bathroom and saying into the mirror, 'You are going to be an actress.'
I generally don't like to talk too much about the character unless I feel stuck or in some trouble.
Every now and then, you get lucky enough to work with some people you feel like you would take a bullet for.
Acting is a community where you come in and out of each other's lives. I'm slightly envious of the Golden Age of Hollywood. It must have been frustrating to be owned by the studio, but it was also like being in a company, working with the same people, and that appeals to me.
I think I really would have quit if I hadn't gotten 'Inherent Vice'. Or maybe I would have just shriveled up and died.
When you're playing Marilyn Monroe, you have a responsibility to look and sound like her that you don't when you're playing people who weren't ever in the public eye.
I didn't feel a specific pressure to prove myself because I had an actor in the family. I didn't feel that pressure to fill some big shoes or anything.
Some days, the first coffee just laughs at you. It says, 'Oh, you think I'm going to wake you up? Sucker.'
I guess whatever the director's energy is is kind of contagious on set, because, um, you know, it's a hierarchy, and we're all kind of looking to the director for guidance.
I find life so shocking in general. Everything about it surprises me.
I don't think Paul Thomas Anderson has a standard approach to anything.
I didn't find it difficult to live in the 'Inherent Vice' world or play those scenes, because they just seemed so real.
I've always wanted to play the villain. But the young girl is never the villain.
I look back at my adolescence, and I'm shocked at the things I did that were my idea of adult behavior.
I thought acting was what grownups did. It was such a part of my childhood. I was already in love with performing before I knew there were other options. By then, it was too late.
When I got to NYU, I immediately inquired about doing a double major in acting and photography.
I feel like people assume if a character is very different than you, that means it's difficult to get into their head or into their skin.
Costume design is so important and really helpful, and I really love that aspect of character development, just figuring it out.
I feel like most actors just dig and dig and work and work in whatever way they do to try to do as much as they can to portray a character in the limited time they have to play it, whether it's six months or one month or one week of work, you know.
I don't like to talk about things unless I have to. I don't like to talk a scene to death or overanalyze it, especially if I feel like I have some way in on my own.
Seeing someone happy on set is just a very small slice of the reality of an actor's life.
When you come from a family of actors, people in show business, they really know to celebrate good news and to celebrate it hard because it's not every day that you get it.
Self-promotion is not my strong suit, for sure. I don't look down on it; I just don't understand how to do it.
I think everything happens organically. You mine for clues. It's all immersive, and stuff you can use comes out of that immersion. I don't really like to wear wigs in movies because I like to look like the character all the time.
I basically never believed that I was a commercial actor. Just because of the outcome of many auditions over time. No one hired me.
It's very easy to think that the way things are is the way things will stay, and life just isn't like that.
I think that when you are struggling as an actor, you imagine that if things were to pan out, everything in your life would change, But really, it's not so different. You're still pursuing good work. You still panic that you're doing it all wrong.
Actors are sensitive freaks, but it amazes me that it is something that I haven't improved on over the years.
There's kind of no rhyme or reason to what is appealing to any given actor. It just is, or it isn't. It's kind of like dating. You either connect to someone or you don't. You can't really say why.
There are people who have really high expectations for what we're doing. I have to not think about that so that I can be free and play around every day and not feel like I have to get it right. You want to be loose.
Usually on films, you get used to kind of being told, 'This is what you're going to wear, this is what you're going to hold, and remember, you're lucky to be here, and shut up.'
'Inherent Vice' was a novel that already existed, and in 'Steve Jobs,' I was playing a real person; in those situations, you do feel an added pressure to please.
People think the advantage of a parent in the business is that they'll open doors for you. But the true advantage for me is having someone who knows exactly what you're going through.
I wonder sometimes if I've got in the habit of only being courageous when someone else has written the words I have to say.
We live in such hypersexualised yet totally prudish times. People have this expectation about everyone else's relationship to their own bodies.'Surely you must have shame about your body? Surely what's scariest for you as actor would be to stand in a room naked?' Believe me, I've been in so many more terrifying situations as a performer than that.
Shower scenes are great. Janet Leigh never took a shower again in her life after 'Psycho'.
