Acting

"Good actors never use the script unless it's amazing writing. All the good actors I've worked with, they all say whatever they want to say."

"I wanted to stop acting. The director was like, 'It looks too real. It looks too painful. Can you be prettier when you cry? Cry pretty, Jessica. Don't do that thing with your face. Just make it flat. We can CGI the tears in.' And I'm like, But there's no connection to a human being. And then it got me thinking: Am I not good enough? Are my instincts and my emotions not good enough? Do people hate them so much that they don't want me to be a person? Am I not allowed to be a person in my work? And so I just said, 'F--k it. I don't care about this business anymore.'"

"I sometimes don’t enjoy it at all, and sometimes it feels like... breath."

"For an actress to be a success she must have the face of Venus, the brains of Minerva, the grace of Terpsichore, the memory of Macaulay, the figure of Juno, and the hide of a rhinoceros."

"It's not whether you really cry. It's whether the audience thinks you are crying."

"For the theatre one needs long arms; it is better to have them too long than too short. An artiste with short arms can never, never make a fine gesture."

"An actor's a guy, who if you ain't talking about him, ain't listening."

"Acting is the expression of a neurotic impulse. It's a bum's life. Quitting acting, that's the sign of maturity."

"The principal benefit acting has afforded me is the money to pay for my psychoanalysis."

"Acting is the least mysterious of all crafts. Whenever we want something from somebody or when we want to hide something or pretend, we're acting. Most people do it all day long."

"If a studio offered to pay me as much to sweep the floor as it did to act, I'd sweep the floor]. There isn't anything that pays you as well as acting while you decide what the hell you're going to do with yourself. Who cares about the applause? Do I need applause to feel good about myself?"

"The close-up says everything, it's then that an actor's learned, rehearsed behavior becomes most obvious to an audience and chips away, unconsciously, at its experience of reality. In a close-up, the audience is only inches away, and your face becomes the stage."

"When an actor has money, he doesn't send letters but telegrams."

"You know, the objective of all of the acting classes really was for you to show how you feel, and not to be clever and not to show all the tricks you could do a lot of people came there with some experience and a lot of times they would bring whatever tricks they had, to be entertaining to the classes. The teachers wanted to strip all those away, and say, "No, could you be emotionally honest onstage?" The first stage of emotional honesty, or at least the resistance to being emotionally honest, is to be angry. When anger doesn't work, you try crying. But those are all just defense mechanisms to shut off how you actually feel about everything. We all build these sort of walls to keep ourselves from showing our true emotions, because they can be seen as weaknesses."

"The thing about performance, even if it’s only an illusion, is that it is a celebration of the fact that we do contain within ourselves infinite possibilities."

"Through studying and through being raised on movie sets, I was surrounded by a lot of people who believed that the more tortured the person, the greater the artist. I always had a hard time understanding that, but thought, "I guess that's the way it is." Luckily, through life and the gift of the acting teacher who's changed my life in so many ways since 1984--her name is Sandra Seacat--I learned there's another opinion, which is: the better the person, the better the artist. The more true you are to who you are and the more honest you are as an individual, the more honest you can be as an actor, and I'm really liking that."

"I think that being an actor is a really good job. Of course, there are things you have to put up with. In order to create a real character from text on a page, you have to be extremely sensitive about various things, so it can impact one’s daily life."

"The question actors most often get asked is how they can bear saying the same things over and over again night after night, but God knows the answer to that is, don't we all anyway; might as well get paid for it."

"Unlike writers or painters, we don't sit down in front of a blank canvas and say, 'How do I start? Where do I start?' We're given the springboard of the text, a plane ticket, told to report to Alabama, and there's a group of people all ready to make a film and it's a marvelous life."

"We read the lines so that people can hear and understand them; we move about the stage without bumping into the furniture or each other; and, well that’s it."

"It was a character that I wanted to play my whole life and not one part of me was indifferent ... but I got incredibly uncomfortable with the attention that just came with that job. It was nothing to do with me, it was to do with this idea of celebrity. Hopefully I’m just more myself as I get older and as I grow, but in our culture they’re telling us to be something totally f--king different."

"An actor can practice anywhere any time with anybody, and most of them do."

"If I say this people will think I'm kidding, but I learned so much about acting working with those wolves on White Fang. If I were to run Juilliard right now, I would make them take a class where they worked with animals. Animals don't know how to lie, so you have to just be with them. Whenever you act weird, or seem like you have an agenda, or are worried about what your hair looks like, they leave the set. They're not interested."

"[S]he'd put a book on a chair and all you did was ask questions about that book: is it a good book or a lousy book? Who made the binding? Why don't I want to read it? Why would I want to read it? How long has it been sitting there? It's a very simple exercise but I do that all the time, constantly question myself and my surroundings, not in a negative way but in a positive way that leads toward my character."

"There are some actors today full of their own importance. They forget that years ago actors were not even second-class citizens. Back then, long before an actor learned makeup, he learned pickpocketing. It's publicity, and all that has made the actor's economic lot a lot better. And being on television has replaced pickpocketing. But I still don't know why actors have become so confoundedly important or why, for example, anybody would be interested in what I have to say. Who am I? Who are other actors? Especially with so many really important people around with really important things to say. Why aren't teachers and professors as awe-inspiring with the public as actors? What they do is certainly a bigger contribution to the welfare of society than what actors do."

"Alfred Hitchcock: You know that I think all actors are cattle? : Yes, I know—but I'm no actor."

"[T]he director passed off the phrase as one of his "Machiavellian quips," not to be taken seriously. "Let us say, rather, that actors are a necessary evil," he cautioned, with a straight face. "As a matter of fact, I couldn't work if I weren't on friendly terms with them; I'll bend over backward every time. Besides, I get into each picture I make, if only for a couple of seconds—so I'm probably a frustrated actor at heart myself.""

"It still goes. But Pat is the nicest cattle I've ever seen."

"The lower lip definitely states that all actors are cattle—including the authorǃ"

"Actors are cattle. I've always said actors are cattle. In fact, Carole Lombard once built a corral on set and put three live calves into it, in recognition of my feelings. I tell them that, and treat them as such, and we get along fineǃ"

"I was more intolerant in the days when I said actors were cattle and the director was the herder. Today I prefer to say actors are children and the wise director treats them that way."

"Then there is a dreadful story that I hate actors. Imagine anyone hating Jimmy Stewart or Jack, last of the . I cannot imagine how such a rumor began, though it may possibly be because I was once quoted as saying that actors are cattle. My actor friends know that I would never be capable of such a thoughtless, rude and unfeeling remark. What I probably said was that actors should be treated as cattle."

"How do you know you are an actor? Where does it begin, the desire to use yourself in this mysterious way? That fantasy was only one of many that helped me cope with a chaotic childhood. Is that kind of fantasy the beginning of an actor? Not for every child, certainly, but important it was to me and to my beginnings. For fantasy is what actors do—they pretend, they make believe, they imagine Lies Like Truth, as titled one of his books. The actor must find a way to make the fantasies given him by the playwright as connected, as important, as necessary to himself as mine were to my ten-year-old self."

"I told them it was an accident, but you know how superstitious actors are."

"Movie actors are just ordinary mixed-up people—with agents."

"What they teach in these acting schools is incredible, hair-raising crap. The Actors Studio in America is supposed to be the worst. There the students learn how to be natural - that is, they flop around, pick their noses, scratch their balls. This bullshit is known as "method acting." How can you "teach" someone to be an actor? How can you teach someone how and what to feel and how to express it? How can someone teach me how to laugh or cry? How to be glad and how to be sad? What pain is, or despair or happiness? What poverty and hunger are? What hate and love are? What desire is, and fulfillment? No, I don't want to waste my time with these arrogant morons."

"People call me an "actor". What's that? In any case, it has nothing to do with the shit that people have always blabbered about it. It's neither a vocation nor a profession - although it's how I earn my living. But then so does the two-headed freak at the carnival. It's something you have to try and live with - until you learn how to free yourself. It has nothing to do with nonsense like "talent," and it's nothing to be conceited or proud of."

"I am persuaded there is no triumph equal to one achieved on the stage—it comes so immediate and so home : you have before you the mass of human beings whose sympathies are at your will; you witness the emotions which you raise, you see the tears which you command : the poet has erected the statue, but it is for you to give it life—the words must find their music on your lips—the generous sentiment, the exalted hope, the touches of deep feeling, ask their expression from you : surely such influence is among the triumphs of the mind, ay and a great and noble triumph."

"Laymen always accuse actors of acting. Because we can portray genuine emotion, we're supposed to be unable to feel it. It's the oldest charge made against us."

"For the sake of narrowing this article’s scope, let’s clarify that a motion-capture actor like not a virtual actor. Serkis is paid as an actor is paid, he wears a costume as an actor does (in this case, a digital costume) and Gollum’s presence on screen still contains Serkis’s performance. (The chrome form of the T-1000 in "Terminator 2: Judgment Day," recreated in a computer from reference footage of , can also be considered this way for our purposes.) We’re only going to discuss the descendants of "" (1987), the computer animated short starring 3D approximations of Marilyn Monroe and Humphrey Bogart. This definition of a virtual actor can range from compositing a face or head onto a stand-in’s body (Brad Pitt in "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button," in "The Crow," in "Gladiator," in "Tron: Legacy") to using age smoothing software (also Pitt in "Benjamin Button," in "Captain America: Civil War," in "Guardians of the Galaxy") to creating an entire virtual body ( in "Deadpool"). Every example cited above is of a man, and every one of those actors got to appear in other scenes in those movies as their usual, sometimes wrinkly, unaugmented selves as well. (Wrinkly and unaugmented is how ’s avatar appeared in "Rogue One: A Star Wars Story," too.) Actresses barely get to appear wrinkly in movies anyway, and now with the advent of virtual possibilities Hollywood has jumped on the chance to find another way to exclude them based on age. I’m not the first critic to notice this— Nate Jones pointed it out in an article in Vulture in October of last year, touching on the other egregious example of a young virtual in "Rogue One".) When it came to creating the virtual Rachel, Young did have some involvement (presumably with her consent, and was presumably financially compensated. As much as Robert Downey, Jr. was for "Captain America: Civil War"? Probably not.)."

"Acting means telling the truth about things, about the world, even if it may seem like a contradiction. Because fiction is one thing, acting is another."

"I have turned roles down because they are rapists. It's something I don't even want to watch. If I even click on it on TV, I have to click it off or I'll put my foot through the screen... What you see on that screen is just my terror at having to do that scene."

"A motion picture must be true to life. If a picture portrays a false emotion it trains people seeing it to react abnormally."

"By the time an actor knows how to act any sort of part he is often too old to act any but a few."

"What I want to do is to become the part -- to leave Tomas Milian wherever he is and become the character."

"Acting is therefore the lowest of the arts, if it is an art at all."

"They wanted to "teach" me to act. But to act is natural. It is ten percent acting and ninety percent being smart."

"I’m not gonna lie, my first instinct—because I love —my first instinct was like, are you being serious? C’mon, man. We’re going too far now. You can’t—like, they’re actors. Actors are gonna act. If we get everyone who is the thing to be the thing, then it’s not acting, then it’s just the thing, it’s a documentary."

"He just wrote a really cogent, beautiful response online. Didn’t fight with anybody, didn’t call anybody anything, didn’t judge anybody. And he completely opened my eyes to a perspective I never thought of. He said, “I understand what an actor is. I, too, am an actor. But I’m an actor in a wheelchair, and I never see parts that are leading roles for a person in a wheelchair. And so the one time I see a role where there’s a person in a wheelchair, I think, wow, this could be it. This could be the moment where I have all of the tools necessary to play this part. Do I get a shot at playing it?” And he was like, “Because when you think of it on the flip side, they never call people with wheelchairs in to play able-bodied people, and they’ll get able-bodied people to play people in wheelchairs.” I never thought of it like that. My perspective, obviously, as someone who is not in a wheelchair—I just never thought of it that way. And I sat there and I was like, it’s powerful because you don’t think about representation, you don’t think about how important it is for people to see themselves onscreen in a real way. And at the same time, I don’t think Bryan Cranston did anything wrong. I don’t think everything has to be a fight. It’s just, like, a moment to be like, hey, maybe next time people in Hollywood can look at that and go, maybe you can get a relatively unknown actor to play that role and then put an A-lister opposite them and maybe this becomes their breakout. Maybe this becomes the thing that blows them up. And that’s where you realize how powerful representation is, because if you’re a person in a wheelchair, how many movies come along where the lead character is in a wheelchair? There’s virtually none. And even myself, I was like, oh man, I have to try and understand that a little bit more. It was eye-opening."

"I knew nothing about the theatre, and so asked the advice of my best friend among the players, , as to what I should do, and his advice was so extraordinary that I took it as a good joke until I noticed that I was creating chaos in the theatre. "Treat us as though we were children," he said shortly. "Nice children, of course; children that you're fond of, but not as grownups. And for God's sake, whatever you do, don't praise us. That drives us mad." It is the best advice that was ever given to a man of the theatre, if only he would be intelligent enough to appreciate it. I wasn't; not for a long time. Arthur never made a great reputation as an actor; he was far too discerning for that; and it was only when I had almost wrecked the company that I realized how discerning he was."