Emile Hirsch Quotes

You can't be a playwright without believing there's an audience for adventurous work.

When theatre works, it's like nothing else, and when it doesn't, which is often, it's excruciating. It's perhaps not so excruciating when a novel goes wrong, but there is a kind of magic that can and should happen.

There's something really amazing about watching an actor like Michael C. Hall or Jennifer Carpenter, who are completely professional and do everything so brilliantly, but yet can have a really great time on set.

Acting is an imaginative leap, really, isn't it? And imaginations prosper in different circumstances.

For me, a play is a form of writing which isn't complete until it is interpreted by actors. But it's still a form of writing. And so most of my time is spent thinking about how to write a sentence.

I see myself as not a typical theater person, but a person who uses the theater as a place to meet people and explore ideas.

The great thing about being an actor is things happen to you very quickly. I like to put myself in the way of surprise.

I mean, I don't know anything else that I would try to do, but it's a very frustrating thing to do, because you are trying to take what's a fantasy in your head and make it live through the minds of 200 people.

This play is truly a great invention, and we're having a great time doing it eight times a week.

Acting is contained - you act for three months, then leave it - but writing is the act of creation. Writing is dangerous.

One of the great pleasures of acting is surrendering to someone else's point of view of the world - living inside a character and a story that never would have come out of your mind or heart.

The magic doesn't come from within the director's mind, it comes from within the hearts of the actors.

Part of the work is determining through what instrument you are playing. Actors are physical, olympian storytellers and we should be able to create entire landscapes with nothing.

You can keep yourself alive. That's the magic of being an actor.

The thing I love about acting is that it's got nothing to do with me; it's about bringing forth a director's vision. It's like a release. I'm glad it's come back into my life.

The riskiest thing I have done in my fifties is to do a Polish accent for a new film. I had a great time working on it and two wonderful people to guide me. A dialect coach that I have known for thirty years and a Polish actor.

Acting is a nice childish profession - pretending you're someone else and, at the same time, selling yourself.

I think that if you've got 5 million people that enjoy drama and invest in characters, you must take the time to not worry about your job and getting sacked and just go for it and hit it again.

I found out a long time ago that if I didn't have a good story for a song, I could just make one up! Now it seems over half the stories in my show are made up. The funny thing is, those seem to be the ones that resonate the most with the audiences.

You know one of the things about going from modeling to acting is it's so much more fulfilling. With modeling, you get your picture taken, which is great, good for you, you know? But in acting, you're able to reach in and show a little bit more of yourself.

Acting isn't like being an athlete. There's no real quantifiable measure. It's just a bunch of people feeling things.

It's a very different thing when you're creating the world as opposed to when you're just part of the world. I love the detail of it, the problem-solving of it, and I love working with actors.

It's such a gift when you know who you're writing for and you know that that actor is capable of so much that you can relax a bit.

We turned Cambridge theatre upside down, using odd spaces and devising everything collaboratively. It eventually blew apart, but I'm still proud of some of what we achieved. The style was very disciplined, and we had the sense to keep things short.

Theater, at the end of the day, is about ideas. It's about very large ideas. And if the play is beautifully written or smartly written and has incredible characters you follow on the journey, you take home these larger ideas. Whether it's 'Angels in America' or 'Lucky Guy' or 'Normal Heart,' you follow this moment-to-moment journey as an audience.