Valorie Curry Quotes

It is hard to be an actor on a TV show, because you don't know what's coming and you sort of find out very last minute sort of what's happening.

Sometimes the character will go into a completely different direction than I expected once the cameras start rolling. That's what I love about what I do.

Sometimes they keep us in the dark, but it's TV, so sometimes they keep us in the dark because even they don't know yet. You know what I mean? So, it sort of develops as it goes along and according to various needs that arise.

Things can change on a daily basis in television. You can be introduced to aspects of your character that you had no idea existed because they didn't exist a week before. The next week it might be taken away from you in some way that you can't control.

A lot of my work is a matter of reacting to surprises in life.

I mean one of the weird things about TV and one of the things that some actors don't like but I kind of dig is that you never know where you're headed, I mean you never know what the writer might think of next.

The good thing about acting is that it always keeps you on your toes... It's not like any other job where you can go in and do the same thing as yesterday.

I typically try not to think too hard about what I'm going to do in a certain scene with a certain actor in a certain moment because I think that kind of lends its way to not being as improvisational and sort of carefree as one would hope.

You learn your lines as well as you can and you go in there and go with whatever is thrown at you. Sometimes you don't know whether or not they're going to break the scene up, so you don't have to do it all at one time.

Although there was a screenplay, the actors never knew what questions I was going to ask them, and all of my character's voice-over narration and scenes were added after the fact.

You get the information, and it's not your job to judge it or not judge it. You adapt, and you do it. That's what we do as actors. We're just as surprised as the viewers, sometimes.

I've always believed acting is an improvisational art form, even when not a single line is changed. I mean, the behavior should always be improvised. My favorite moments in any performance are when I'm just along for the ride; when I'm surprising myself. I know when I'm done and I think to myself, 'Gee, I didn't see that coming,' I've done well.

Well, I love acting, and I love acting quick.

When I do a take, I very often try things that I haven't planned to try to see if I can pull it off.

When I was doing 'All in the Family,' half the time, I was looking at where the cameras were, where were the other actors in the scene, what the audience was doing.

With theatre, you have to be ready for anything.

I'm not somebody who plans. There were times I planned a lot in my life, and it never turns out how you plan it. So I think it's important not to. I'm a very spontaneous person.

In real life, you don't know what's going to happen to you, so why would your character know? It's liberating to play the emotion your character is feeling at the time and not know what's coming up. I like it.

Sometimes it works, sometimes it fails, but that's what we face when we're dealing with improvisation.

I'm attracted to roles that are unpredictable, and if I can get my hands on something like that, I'm thrilled. I like performances where you don't know what's coming, moment to moment.

Sometimes you don't want to get married too much to a lot of rehearsing, I feel, when it comes to film, because there's so many technicalities. So if I'm in my head, I've gotten settled on something, I'm gonna have to change it if I get there and something was set that's completely different.

I find out more about Jack every week. Essentially, I'm the same character, but I'm having more fun this season because I'm doing more aliases, you know. I like the surprise of not knowing.

When you do a play, or even a movie, you have weeks to finesse your character. You really understand why they do what they do. In TV, you get new material weekly about your character.

My whole life has been one big improvisation.

I was a repertory actor, which meant that I did a play every week. I was a different character every week; for a year, I was doing 40 or 50 characters.