Actresses can get outrageously precious about the way they look. That's not what life's about. If you starve yourself to the point where your brain cells shrivel, you will never do good work. And if you're overly conscious of your arms flapping in th...
I'm an actor, full stop. Not an Arab actor. Not an actor of Algerian origin. Just an actor.
In this country, you have movie actors and theatre actors and television actors.
Only be an actor if you can't be happy doing anything else. I don't think you should be an actor if you want to be actor. I think you should be an actor if you have to be an actor.
I really feel that the best actors out there are very centric. They're really connected. They're not in a, 'What about me' state, and I think that's a good lesson in life.
Bart The Bear was fantastic to work with. Absolutely brilliant and so, so good. The things that that bear could do to order! He was one of the best actors I've ever worked with.
Any actor is happy to be involved with something that's challenging, controversial, and not easily palatable. Things that are too dumbed down or easy to swallow are uninteresting... It's good when people have such a polarizing response.
So I think it's fair to say it's even more of a challenge for some of these actors that are coming up, because there's such a pressure to look good, to be sexy and be palatable to people on whatever level.
I didn't need the insurance. I do it again if my DP tells me it didn't look good in the camera or if the actors didn't hit their marks. But if everything was working why do it again?
In my first film, I was a basketball player. Like every good actor, I lied when they asked me if I could play.
There's no blueprint for where I should be. I see myself as a young, good actor who still has a lot to learn. There's nobody at any point in their career who is the finished article.
I think a lot of good actors - for instance, Gary Sinise - have no training. His training was really entirely on his feet. I suppose you have to have an instinct for it.
The fact is, as actors, everything we do, bad or good, is a contribution. To me, it is a positive thing to give people as wide a range of human behavior with some sense of understanding of that behavior or some clue to it.
These actors like Danny McBride and Jonah Hill are so good at improvising, and when they do it, it's this fun moment for the audience. It makes them feel like they're watching something fresh and new.
Good actors can sort of see into people and immediately you have a chemistry with them or not. It's like an affair with no mess.
I never had any classes or went to theatre school like a lot of actors, so all of my training has been on stage with different directors. That was a pretty good school room.
I think being a character actor is exciting in that it allows you to embody completely different things, whether it's through wild accents or a crazy bad guy or a drunken good guy.
If it's well written and well directed and you've got good actors to work with, acting is easy. But making sure all the ducks are in a row is the hard part. It's very rare.
Once you've been booked, people in Hollywood say, 'Oh he must be good.' All the while you're the same actor.
It's such a small industry here you inevitably end up working with the same people over and over again. There are only so many actors to go around, which is good for us.
It's certainly more interesting for me as an actor, but I think it's also more interesting for the audience to see three-dimensional characters, rather than just a bad guy or a good guy.
