Hilary Swank Quotes

We're all about trying to play better every night, not just singing hit songs ... we ad lib, and every night there's jamming .. it's almost like the Grateful Dead meets Buck Owens some nights, because we'll go off on little adventures and sometimes we do crash the bus!.

Hopefully I'm bringing to rock n' roll the kind of spontaneity that I love, and always believed rock and roll stands for.

I don't do anything on stage that allows me to become a trained seal, where you're just doing the same thing over and over.

The show is different every night, because I never write a setlist.

In the theatre you can change things ever so slightly; it's an organic thing. Whereas in film you only have that chance on the day, and you have no control over it at all.

I'm open to anything. I would love to play someone completely off the wall.

A certain rough-around-the-edges improvisational looseness - a sense of something coming together before your eyes, or not quite - may be one of the things that distinguishes performance art from theater.

I wouldn't be interested in just doing a show that's mapped out and choreographed with a set list. That would've been boring so long ago it just wouldn't be any fun.

The hardest thing is that I never do anything the same way twice, and when I'm on the air, I'm very unscripted, and I'm very comfortable in that role. So me being scripted is not a comfortable place for me.

My comedy is different every time I do it. I don't know what the hell I'm doing.

My gigs are built on improvisation: I go out there and I'm like the Energizer bunny.

Doing a musical is like having a kid. It's out there alive somewhere. It's not like a movie or a TV show where what we intended is what everyone will see. The kid can act out. The kid's going to do what it wants to do.

The thing I love about sketch is sometimes it leads you as opposed to you leading it.

I don't think we've ever known what the hell's going on when we do Tap shows. It's possible the audience are effectively getting to see more of the movie when we play. You know, they know the songs, so anything we do onstage, whether we're meaning to or not, is an extension of the film. Other than that, I wouldn't understand what's going on.

I prefer doing TV, where it can be different every time.

You've gotta leave enough space for your actors to bring stuff to the table and whatever the weather's doing that day or what the light's like. Things can shift, and you have to be malleable. Every day is a different feeling and a change.

My shows have room for a bit of improvisation. In a film, you can't have that risk; you can't have someone taking 10 seconds longer.

I like to leave things open, and even when I write out the story ahead of time, it always changes. I don't think I would finish anything if I was sticking to a plan that was very rigid.

You must not be afraid of playing wrong notes. Just forget it, play it wrong! But play!

Actors are like kids, they need to play a little bit. And that's the nature of their job, they need to shake off some energy and then you as the director get them back on track. When you do loosen up the reins, you get some amazing things, but you have to wring out the performances for every last good drop.

I always do that at the end of shows, like a Q&A session. First of all it lets people know that this isn't some preprogrammed, press-play show where I have to say the exact same words in the exact same order. That's part of the thing with live comedy is that people like the fun aspect of it and I enjoy the taking questions part.

I have no style, because I change each time . . . each day I play differently. Today I play differently than yesterday.

Many times you never know what's going to happen. You'll play songs that you never thought you were going to play.

That's what's so satisfying about acting. You can come as prepared as you like, but there's no accounting for what's going to come at you from the other actor. That's part of the joy and the play of it. If you don't have that it's a different kind of performance.

Usually, you get a script and you have the whole story. All the acts are there, for a play. You know what happens in the first, second and third acts, and you know how it starts, where you go and where it finishes. [With American Horror Story: Asylum], it's a whole new experience. I don't know where it's going, and I don't know what's going to happen next. It's been an interesting way to work. It's made me work in a much more fluid, braver way, just taking every chance that comes along.