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Actor Quotes


"I trained as a theater actor and you had a bare stage and you had to pretend, one prop and you are in the middle of 8th Ave. and traffic is just going by."


"An actor shouldn't undergo psychoanalysis, because there are a lot of things you're better off not knowing."


"It's hard to compare actors from different generations."



"From 1980 to 1990, I shot more films than any other actor in the Screen Actors Guild, apart from Gene Hackman."


"It's a lot easier, I think, to be an actor in a movie than to spin a joke on a sitcom."


"You have to pretend to live in those clothes that they lived in, to live within the climate that they had then. You have to imagine with the help, obviously, of all the other technicians that are around - the writer, the director, the other actors."


"I like to grow as an actor, and you can do that by playing parts that are unfamiliar to you and uncomfortable."



"It was actually a relief for me to play an actor who was scared, who didn't know where everything was, who didn't know what buttons to push, and for me to be able to play all that."


"Every year or so, I try to do something; it keeps me refreshed as to what's going on in front of the lens, and I understand what the actor is going through."


"That's how I like to do it with actors, have them really go for it and I'll tell them when it's too much. It's always easier to bring it back then to push it further."


"When you see something that is well-written, the actors can get behind it."


"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."


"I decided to become an actor because I was failing in school and I needed the credits."


"I feel like I'm a good actor, but I wouldn't call myself a gifted actor."


"In motion pictures, the actor rules. The camera served the actor."


"You can see when an actor gets bored: Their eyes go dead. I promised myself I'd never let that happen. If it does, I'll go and live on a desert island for a year."



"I still think of myself as a stage actor. When I do film and television I try to implement what I was taught to do in theatre, to try to stretch into characters that are far from myself."



"You know the actor John Garfield? In one movie he walked up to this train station, the ticket booth, and the guy says, 'Yes, where are you going?' And he says, 'I want a ticket to nowhere.' I thought: that's it. The freedom to do that. I want a ticket to nowhere."


"Being unemployed is not good for an actor. No, it isn't, no matter how unsuccessful you are. Because you always remember getting fired from all the restaurants. You remember that stuff very, very strongly."


"It confirms for me that we did something on Days that meant something. We had our ups and downs, but Missy and I and some of the other actors, created something that was really memorable."



"One of the pleasures of being an actor is quite simply taking a walk in someone else's shoes. And when I look at the roles I've played, I'm kind of amazed at all the wonderful adventures I've had and the different things I've learned."


"Oh, well, in Los Angeles everybody is an actor, or a producer, or a writer, or a director, or an agent, or... So everybody understands the hours."


"I had a feeling about Shakespeare's soliloquies, that there should be a real exchange between the actor and the audience."


"I wanted to be a doctor when I was young. I also wanted to be a paramedic, but I always wanted to be an actor as well. I didn't have kids or something that I needed to provide for."


"A lot of talented actors still have to pay their bills."


"There is some mysterious thing that goes on whereby, in the process of playing Shakespeare continuously, actors are surprised by the way the language actually acts on them."


"To wait, for an actor, is not like someone who's waiting to see the doctor. It's not the kind of wait where you get bored."
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