I have been taking some classes in woodworking. It's really helpful just looking at a problem, and having a very tangible way in constructing it.

Between films you try to fill your life with hobbies acting is really so satisfying when you're doing it, and definitely feeds your imagination and creativity to a great degree, but you can't really take much away from it to show for it. I try to fill my time with other things.

Delving deeper into character's motivations one thing I always find helpful is to imagine the person as a child, imagine them at a very early stage, prior to having all of the things taken away from them, or all of the habits put onto them that they end up having, and then going from there.

There are a lot of actors who are doing dream work where they focus on a role and try to bring it into their dreams. I haven't done that work, but I've always found that when I'm studying for a role, the work I'm doing somehow manages to enter my dreams, no matter what approach I take.

asically, we got to know other and openly trade stories, and had some time to prep. As far as the 'going too far' thing, the great thing about film art is that you can go too far, and with multiple takes nobody has to see it.