Every scene you will ever act begins in the middle, and it is up to you, the actor, to provide what comes before.
Listening is not merely hearing. Listening is reacting. Listening is being affected by what you hear. Listening is active.
Consistency is the death of good acting.
Every scene is a love scene. The actor should ask the question: ‘Where is the love?’
To go into acting is like asking for admission to an insane asylum. Anyone may apply, but only the certifiably insane are admitted.
An expression of feeling isn’t worth anything unless it interferes with what the other actor in the scene wants.
Acting in theatre or television or screen is only for the irrecoverably diseased, those so smitten with the need that there is no choice.
The first step to a better audition is to give up character and use yourself.
Actors, who should pride themselves on their singularity, are forever trying to be someone else. It isn’t necessary for you, the actor, to like yourself – self-love isn’t easy to come by for most of us – but you must learn to trust who you are. There is no one else like you.
The moral: Don’t settle for anything less than the biggest dream for your future Fight to make the dream come true.
Take nothing for granted. Make an emotional discovery as often as you can find one in every scene. Ask yourself: What is new?
Whatever you decide is your motivation in the scene, the opposite of that is also true and should be in it.
There’s only one reason why a character drinks: to seek confrontation. To fight for what they want in ways normally denied them.
The life of an actor is a bit easier to take if you admit you’re bonkers.
The actor needs to find out what the basic fight is in every character in every scene.
That’s why there’s so little romance in our world now: everyone thinks romance is weak.
Everyone thinks romance is weak. Yet romance is everyone’s secret dream-it’s why we’re alive.
If we lived for reality, we’d be dead, every last one of us. Only dreams keep us going.
Most actors make themselves unhappy by searching for their sanity, by insisting on their normalcy; it’s a grave mistake.
Humor is an attitude, a survivor’s way of looking at life. It’s not about telling jokes.