Jessica Capshaw Quotes

I can't imagine anything more debilitating, anything more challenging, anything more thrilling than to get on a stage and do any kind of play. It is such a vulnerable place for any actor to be in.

As much as I can act, I don't have anything in me that yearns to be an actor - that sense of needing to be onstage, in costume, in character; that is utterly not interesting to me.

With acting, I always feel conscious of what I'm doing.

The job of an actor is the same in all of them, really. I mean, you're just creating a character that you hope people will believe, so it doesn't make that much of a difference really.

The reason why I hate working in theatre is the tedium of memorisation. But once that is done, then you feast on this never-ending meal. If you play it correctly, every night is fraught with very high stakes that are very difficult to find in everyday life.

It's interesting to play a role where you don't really have to preoccupy yourself with any need to convince yourself that you're not acting.

The actor should not play a part. Like the Aeolian harps that used to be hung in the trees to be played only by the breeze, the actor should be an instrument played upon by the character he depicts.

Talking to actors is the same as talking to any other artists; it's getting into the moment for them, and making sure they can lose themselves in the performance!

I have to believe in the character to perform it.

I feel no terror when I'm acting. There's no tension. It's just a part.

I don't ever recall being nervous before performing because I've already stepped into the shoes and the clothes of the character.

Acting is like lifting a 400-pound feather. It's a feather, how hard could it be? And yet, you go to lift it and it's heavy. For that reason, I love it, because it's very hard and difficult and challenging and obviously I want to learn more.

I think my concerns are the same as every actor. Can I find this character and make it come to life properly?

I feel that if you're going to do theater, you've really got to throw yourself into the deep end. You have to commit your whole life and soul to it to make it the best it could ever be because theater can truly change people in lots of different ways. But I also think it can bore people to death, and it's quite a fine line between those two things.

I want to break into the acting industry. It's something I have a great deal of respect for; it's a passion of mine. It's so amazing, the differences between acting and being an athlete, but the one commonality is they both evoke emotion in the viewer. And those emotions are real. So I think that's pretty cool.

There's a tremendous amount to be gained from being a performer, and being an artist, and being an actor.

When a performance isn't working, it's usually because the actor is trying to do something and they're not able to express their idea very well. It's a muddled expression.

I have played Dracula a thousand times on stage and I find I have become thoroughly settled in the technique of the stage and not of the screen.

An actor is supposed to be a sensitive instrument.

A big moment for me was when I did a play that was a new adaptation of Dostojevskij's 'Crime and Punishment,' and I played Raskolnikov. It was actually the first thing I did when I got out of acting school.

On the whole, actors shout when they don't know what they're doing, trying to make an impact.

I could not separate myself off stage from myself on stage, as so many actors can.

The next day I was in my school's production of All My Sons. This was the performance where I realized something was happening between me and the audience that I hadn't recognized before.

I've always felt like I've been in good shows.

So what's so enticing about doing a play is that you get to do that thing that got you into acting in the first place... There's a real attraction to being able to play, to just play. And that's something that theater affords you.