Ari Graynor Quotes

As an actor sometimes you can be a bit emotional and forceful, and that's not always the way to be.

In order to be a good actor, I'm a firm believer that you need to bring something to the table.

I would be the worst acting coach ever, because I have no idea what I'm doing.

As an actor, you tend to draw on your human instincts and your background, what you've gone through as an individual.

I had never really acted before, so I really didn't know what I was doing. The casting director for 'Euphoria' set me up with an acting coach in New York, and he completely flipped my world around. The way you learn to utilize your brain and your emotions really freaked me out.

I was trained by Method acting teachers and we were taught that aside from whatever gift you may or may not have or the level of that gift, that you were obliged to know how to build a table. It's a craft. It's like being a ballerina or a violinist.

For the actors, the talent is to serve the demands that I ask of them, to do it with naturality and truth, and to be honest when we were terrified.

Because I came out as a singer, I took the time to get an acting coach.

I am a proud participant of the Spencer Tracy School of Acting: Know your lines, don't bump into the furniture.

Drama school can't make you a brilliant actor, but you can do stuff for three years - you're not going to be fired. You should just go for it all, even the stuff you think is codswallop.

Your primary tools, as an actor, are observation and imagination. You can pretty much get everything you need from that, and you do. It brings back that element of pretend.

I have just gained a deeper and deeper respect for acting and the whole art of it because you're really trying to live a life and to do the best justification for it.

The secret of being a great actor is a love of food.

I pick up a lot of stuff from them, but I don't think there's any great trick to acting.

If the script's good, everything you need is in there. I just try and feel it, and do it honestly. I also don't learn things for auditions, because I feel like it's just a test of memorizing rather than being real. Maybe every other actor would think that was terrible, I don't know. But it seems to have worked for me, so far.

Movie acting is about covering the machinery. Stage acting is about exposing the machinery. In cinema, you should think the actor is playing himself, if he's that good. It looks very easy. It should. But it's not, I assure you.

I think sometimes soap acting gets an unfair label for being bad and over the top. The lessons I learned there were so valuable. Seeing yourself every day on television, you learned what worked and didn't work, what was bad acting and what wasn't. Memorizing scripts became second nature.

And at NYU, I went to the Atlantic Theater Company, and they have two main points. One of them is to always be active in something instead of just feeling it. And the other is figuring out your character.

As an actor, your life experience is just as important as studying.

I trained as a stage actor and was given a lot of technical tools to play with.

I've not taken like acting lessons or anything but it doesn't mean I don't need to because I'm sure I do.

To me, a lot of what makes a good actor is not what a teacher tells you to do but how you respond when you're on your own.

I thought acting was all about natural instinct but I've realised, through working with so many talented actors on 'Wild Swans' and 'Run,' that I can see the training. That's why I am back at drama school.

If you're cast right you can actually just let yourself go because all your gestures will be right, all your intonations will be right because you just somewhere understand who this person is.

To be a good actor you have to feel life and observe life.