Jennifer Garner Quotes

A lot of the time, you're supposed to play to the top of your intelligence, as truthful as possible. But when you're on stage making people laugh, you're still acting. I think it helped me a bunch to go on stage two or three times a week.

I thought that I was going to be a stand-up comedian or an actress. Turns out, I can't act my way out of a paper bag and stand-up comedy is a lot harder than it appears.

It's funny, the hardest thing to do is to make something look like it's fast, loose and improvised, and get somebody to laugh.

Good acting is thinking in front of the camera. I just do that and apply a sense of humor to it. You have to trust the audience to get it.

Acting is not about dressing up. Acting is about stripping bare. The whole essence of learning lines is to forget them so you can make them sound like you thought of them that instant.

Being on 'The Office' prepared me for drama. Comedy got me ready, but once you get down to it, they're two sides of the same thing. I mean, the delivery has to be different - in drama, there's more time to breathe, and comedy's all about hitting the joke.

Acting is about being in the moment and audiences are smart to know what is authentic and what is not.

On some level in acting, what you're trying to find is truth, because when it's true is when it's also funny.

Here's the thing, with comedy - and I learned this from Will Ferrell - you can't be ashamed. If you're doing comedy, you have to fully commit to the joke. Shame is not part of it. If you act shy or uncomfortable about your body, that makes the audience shy and uncomfortable. And in a comedy you just want them to loosen up and laugh.

I enjoy the work I do in comedies. It's a valid test of your creative abilities.

I approach a comedy the same way I do a drama. I try to make it as real as possible.

In school, I was playing old men and women, babies, Russian people, and all sorts of weird parts - a lot of comedy - and that's sort of like home to me.

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

If you're saying the same line 10 times and making it look like you just came up with it, that's acting.

I did comedies for 10 years and I learned a great deal.

I really loved what I was doing being creative and being funny as a stand-up comedian.

My stand-up is quite good now, people say. It's just like a big conversation each time. Every gig is a rehearsal.

Ultimately, I just decided stand-up comedy is a huge commitment, and if you want to be the best, you have to give it one hundred per cent.

You work with stand-up comedians or you work with somebody in theater, you work with somebody from 'Star Search' or 'Survivor' or a kid, it constantly changes how you play with people.

In order to represent life on the stage, we must rub elbows with life, live ourselves.

Whether it's a double take or a spit take or an extra-long pause before a reaction or a line, I try to be as cognizant as possible about the technical end of it. So I think the physical stuff works easier for me than maybe for others who are more just going on instinct.

I would have to say that I have to concentrate more when I'm doing comedy. There are so many details that make up any character, but developing a character for a dramatic role seems to come more naturally.

To be honest, I am somebody that, as long as I have a character, it doesn't really matter if it's comedy or drama - I think timing is important in either. But for me, it's all about having a character to work on.

If you're acting, then there's a prescribed way to behave; whereas in life, there's no prescribed way. So acting feels like a comfortable way to get through the day.

I think everyone's different but in comedy, I try to do my scene to make the director and the other actors laugh. If I can make them laugh and we have the same sensibility, then I'm on the right page.