Acting's all about the confidence you exude, especially on film. I mean, nervousness isn't attractive in anyone, but a film camera will seek it out and punish you.
When I'm about ready to press the cable release on the View camera, I've tried to anticipate some of the challenges I'm going to encounter in the darkroom.
I even agree with the new digital ways of filmmaking, where you don't even have physical film in the camera, but to be honest, I wouldn't want to use it.
I've been in beautiful landscapes where one is tempted to whip out a camera and take a picture. I've learned to resist that.
The camera has always been a guide, and it's allowed me to see things and focus on things that maybe an average person wouldn't even notice.
On TV, you have wardrobe fittings, you have four cameras on you at all times, and you're worried about your angles and your lighting and your shots.
The biggest battle for a lot of people who come out of the theater, which is where I was trained, is that they can never forget that a camera is pointed at them.
And I'm sure after Facebook it will be the little cameras that we have implanted into the palms of our hands and we'll be debating whether we should get them, and then we'll all get them.
It's technically demanding to shoot in 3-D. It's an extra element. Also, just the size of the cameras. They look like these 'Transformers' monsters; they are incredibly big, many of them.
No doubt zombie films are dumb, but I find it impressive that zombies can hold a camera relatively steady, let alone write a screenplay.
When I first began, the technicians, camera and makeup men made me feel so self-conscious that I began to have the biggest inferiority complex about my looks.
One of my fantasies in my life has been that I was granted access with a camera to go back in time, and to film the actual campaign of Alexander crossing into India through Iran and Persia.
One of the Life Saving men snapped the camera for us, taking a picture just as the machine had reached the end of the track and had risen to a height of about two feet.
I was molded, spent my time underneath a lot of goo. And then the bits and pieces were sculpted. It took probably 10 days to create each character after all those camera tests.
I was so besotted with '8½' that, when it was on TV, I used to take pictures with my 35-mm. camera of the frames of the film. That was the first time I'd ever really seen Italians on screen.
The trick is not to become somebody else. You become somebody else when you're in front of a camera or when you're on stage. There are some people who carry it all the time. That, to me, is not acting.
I just want to do more work. Every time I step in front of a camera I feel young again. I really do. It keeps your mind active and it keeps you going.
The '80s were a time of technical wonder in filmmaking; unfortunately, some colleges didn't integrate their film and theater departments - so you had actors who were afraid of the camera, and directors who couldn't talk to the actors.
Actually, the camera was never overhead at any time. It was always a side view of me. Subsequently, after the picture was released, I saw some scenes from above and my clothes being pulled-and I think that was added later.
Usually for cartoons, I record them in the mornings from 9 A.M. to noon, then I have the rest of the day to do on camera. It actually gives me time to work on my own projects.
My first modeling job was Gap, and my first time in front of the camera was for a Soda Pop Girls commercial - it's one of those Bratz dolls, Barbie dolls... one of those.
