I feel like everything you learn as an actor growing up is wrong. You're supposed to hit your mark, find your light and know your lines. Those are all things that just make things wooden, dull and boring.
I can't wait to meet Steven Spielberg or Al Pacino again so I can say, 'I have to tell you how you know me. You know me because I am the worst actor in the world.'
Everyone forgets comedians are actors. There's no question about it. A Robin Williams cannot say the same line every night for 40 weeks and make it sound fresh unless he's doing an acting job.
That's one of the difficult things of being an actor that I'm still not used to. You have to go, you have to show up at these places where you know nobody, and sometimes with really impressive, high stakes people like Roman Polanski.
A lot of people that make films say, 'We need this kind of character. Who's done it before? Get them to do it again.' That is exactly what actors are pushing against. It's kind of a cliche to talk about being stereotyped in that way, but it happens.
How do you deal with giving yourself the options in the editing room for dealing with problems that come up from a shifting tone? It's trying to convince your actors to give you the genes and several versions to have more options in the editing room.
Once during a taping there was an actor who kept blowing his lines. It happened again and again. Finally Norman Fell came out-he wasn't even in that scene. But Norman came out and you know what he did? He killed the guy with a hammer.
Some of these things I saw in foreign films - African films, Cuban films - long before I decided to really go on this course as an actor. I started to think about what values I saw in those films that I wanted to bring to my projects.
New platforms are emerging: Netflix, Amazon, Hulu and Xbox. And film actors are gravitating towards television, because there are basically better roles there. Television is making the kind of epics and genres that the movie studios used to make, and...
Film is mostly a visual medium, and so the director has much more control in terms of painting pictures and painting a performance. For theater, the director does everything he can and then says, 'Out you go,' and the actors are in charge of that sta...
The first movie I saw where it convinced me I could be an actor was 'Mean Streets,' so whenever I see Robert De Niro and he says, 'Hi, Denis,' it's still a really big deal.
When I told my parents I wanted to be an actor, it was like saying I wanted to be an astronaut. Not because it was highfalutin' in any way - just because they didn't know anybody in that field. They were anxious of a profession they knew nothing abou...
When I'm working with Red One, we all have to do everything, from making sets and costumes to tearing tickets. Forget about craft services! So when I get on a film set, it's a thrill to be just working as an actor.
I just feel incredibly lucky to be employed when there are so many actors and actresses who are not employed. That's why, you know, I sometimes feel desperate, in case I'm not going to be cast again.
The scariest people to turn a movie over to are always the people who are drawing up the poster, because that's the first impression it's going to make. And very often it's portraying a very different film from the one the actors actually did.
A lot of the people in San Francisco think of themselves as healers - not just as people delivering this base service, but giving their clients spiritual help. It's almost like being an actor, playing a different part for each trick.
I don't have a burning desire to act, strangely enough. I don't know that if I hadn't been an actor as a young person, I don't know that I ever would have chosen this because it's not really my personality.
Nobody ever starts out to make a mediocre, commercial film. You always think it's going to be something. And then, once you're done with your shooting, you have no control. You're just done, as an actor.
You've heard the phrase 'There are no small roles, just small actors?' Well, I kind of disagree. There are small roles, but when you get a lot of them in a row, you can become a pretty successful actress, and that's what I've done.
Everything about video games has changed. The writing, the acting, the visuals, obviously - everything has gone to a new level. And the difference that I see as an actor is that I don't have to push that extra bit to sell what's going on.
Collaboration to me is... my favorite collaboration in the theatre is the collaboration between the actors and the audience because it's just that thing that happens when the only thing left that is left on the human scale is that human beings come t...
