Alan Bates Quotes

When I see an emotion being enacted by a great actor, I always feel I can never do that.

The worst acting is about imitation.

Good acting comes from finding the essence of a character.

I'm interested in the acting and staging of specific emotions, and so I work with actors. It's a small proportion of what I do, but it's always what people seem to focus on.

When I watch an actress say a line, I watch how they deliver the lines with gestures.

Some actors get by with behaving, not acting. You've got to sell the effect. I act more in the 'Nightmare' movies because it's not like me. I'm acting, not reacting.

Nobody is more truthful when he's acting than De Niro.

Good actors, you always know what they're thinking. That's why they're good actors.

With film, it's all about the actor being able to feel the things that the character's feeling. It must do some strange things to your mind. Music I find much easier because you're being honest about where you are as a person.

It definitely helps to have the acting experience going into singing, because when you're singing, you have to portray the emotion you were feeling when you wrote the song. They're the same thing, in a way; it's expressing your emotions through words.

You take what you know, and you put it through your own prism. If I play characters that break down or cry, it's Gary Oldman crying; it's not the character crying.

Actors have to make you believe that it's happening for the first time and all that jazz and make it human and at the same time entertain you.

How do I act so well? What I do is I pretend to be the person I'm portraying in the film or play.

I've never been a method actress; I've never been that person that wants to imagine horrible things happening in your own life in order to exploit them for your emotional being in the movie. I'm just not good at doing that.

In acting, you draw so much on your private life.

I think with the best actors, emotion is something that has no kind of check in them.

Bad actors try to cry, and good actors try not to. Bad actors try to laugh, and good actors try not to.

I think I'm sort of method in a sense, and I enjoy, you know, trying to find that reality in fake emotion.

When an actor sings a song, he will be able to bring forth the emotion in it much better than a playback singer.

With acting, a lot of it has to come from that real, honest place.

Sometimes directors come to me when I have to play some horrible thing, scary or hysterical or crying; they ask, 'Did you study somewhere to be an actress?' No, this is life. That's why I think I don't want to say you need a really bad experience to be a good artist, but bad experiences in your life say something.

Crying does not equal good acting.

I don't really overthink my characters. The camera comes on, and I am on.

An actor's job is to find variations of the same emotion in his being so that every time he expresses grief or joy, it doesn't look the same.

I think an actor without life experiences is empty.