Katherine Waterston

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.'

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.

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 have been a scrappy actor for 10-plus years, and when you're playing supporting roles, your relationship with the costume designer is very different.

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.

When I go to see a movie, I never think about all the people it took to make it.

Obviously, as an actor, you have to embrace your imagination all the time, but when you're doing one of these films, you have to embrace your most childlike imagination - a sense of wonder and uninhibited playfulness.

My first memory of the Harry Potter series was my little brother just falling into those books and not resurfacing until he was done. That J.K. Rowling got an entire generation reading is extraordinary - I'm amazed, thrilled, and proud to now be portraying one of that phenomenal writer's characters.

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.

Shower scenes are great. Janet Leigh never took a shower again in her life after 'Psycho'.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 basically never believed that I was a commercial actor. Just because of the outcome of many auditions over time. No one hired me.

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.

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.

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.

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.