When I go to a movie, I'm always thrilled if I've seen an actor do something and I didn't realize until the end of the movie that that was that person. I love that.
Actors fall into this trap if they missed being loved for who they really were and not for what they could do - sing, dance, joke about - then they take that as love.
The storytelling in a movie is in the cut; it's in the edit. It's not an actor's job, really. Your job is such a tiny little thing, and I love the feeling of juggling or tightrope walking.
There are a lot of actors whom I love, who personalize their work. I want to know everything about them, like De Niro, like Gary Oldman.
There's a lot of romanticisation of the intuitive actor and method acting and all kinds of notions about getting inside a character and coming out from there.
I don't wear a wig. I'd feel terrible onstage with a wig. I hate to be so 'Actors Studio'-ish, but I like to feel it's me out there.
The most important thing for me as an actor playing a character is to make you laugh. That's my No. 1 goal.
It's an incredible privilege for an actor to look into the camera. It's like looking right into the heart of the film, and you can't take that lightly.
It's a scary thing going into the workforce with a $50,000 debt and you've been trained as a classical theatre actor. There's always a depression in the theatre.
The thing is, the studio then forget that you're an actor and that you can do other things, and so since they pay you for that, they don't want you to do anything else.
I'm lucky enough to say my day job is acting. I cut my teeth as a theater actor and playwright in New York.
My tendency as an actor is, when there's a certain energy, I feel a challenge to match it, to come up to that plate and play on the same level.
I'm happy being an actor, it's what I have always wanted to do. I'm just lucky I got to do it so early.
I think my advice to other actors would be to get in classes. Get out in front of people. Put up scenes in front of your peers.
I've met big-name actors doing Hollywood films, and they've said that all they want is an in at HBO and their own show.
It has given me an insight into what it's like as an actor to come into a show in the middle of a production and fit into a group that's already established.
Those offers come in now and again. They're not knocking down my door. I'm only an old character actor, and I'm not needed.
I've got actor friends who didn't get breaks, who struggle and worry about things that I'm fortunate not to have to worry about.
Any actor wants to do interesting roles, different roles. It's not all that much fun to do the same thing over and over again.
One of the strangest things about being an actor is that people you don't know feel that they are allowed to comment on your hair, body, clothes, relationships.
You want to be on your toes; You don't want to be in a Nic Cage movie and just have him blow by you as an actor.
