Dabney Coleman Quotes

A lot of moms give their kids line reads. My mom wasn't put in that position because I always had an acting teacher helping with the feelings rather than how to say something.

One of the reasons why I went to the Yale School of Drama is because I felt that I was acting off of instinct, but sometimes that is not reliable. When you're not feeling it, what do you do? So, going to grad school was about getting the tools to just use my instrument to the best of my ability.

If I wasn't acting, I'd be teaching acting. That would be my easiest thing to fall back on is teaching it.

I am more than glad to take tips from experienced actors.

The thing about me is I have a great little acting school. I teach about 125 students.

A lot of people are surprised to hear that an actor studied for two or three years. They take the craft for granted and wanna just wake up and be an actor.

As an actress, I was trained to show emotion I did not feel, or no emotion at all.

Most actors nowadays are models turned actors. That's why a lot of young actors are terrible. You have to learn how to act. It is not something that you can just do.

I want to keep on progressing. I definitely think acting is a long process to be one of the greats like Morgan Freeman or Jack Nicholson.

Good acting is good acting, however you learn it. Some people who haven't studied are amazing. Some people like Leonardo DiCaprio are naturally gifted - he's learned technique by working with people early on.

I learned more about acting from George Stevens in a few months than I had in my entire life up until then.

I was a guy who needed to go to class, because I had some raw talent that I thought was identifiable, when I finally made a decision to be an actor. And yet I wanted to learn how to really do the stuff. You know, 'How do I get to be a serious actor?'

I always tell younger actors that if they want to learn the ropes, there's no better place to do it than right here in the U.K.

I try not to read acting books any more, but they set a high bar for me very early on.

In my early days, I used to go to many acting gurus, Asha Chandra and Roshan Taneja being two of them.

Emerging actors know there's a whole lot to learn each time they are spending with someone who's done a lot.

I grew as an actor just by watching Kamal Haasan acting. I had the good fortune of being able to observe Kamal Haasan from close quarters.

As far as acting, I just went in and just started training. It was the first thing I did right when I retired. I just went in and found class, and found people, found the right coaches that could sort of just train me along.

When you're 20 and you're in acting school and your teachers tell you that 95 percent of actors are unemployed for twenty years, you think it doesn't apply to you. But it does take twenty years to become real, because that's what you have to do to be an interesting actor.

It was a treat to work with Sarmad Sehbai. I wish actors had more teachers like him.

I am not of the vein of actors - and I will not pretend to be one - that takes my character home with me. I don't.

Sandy Meisner would say it takes 20 years to make an actor. Some people it takes five, some people 30. And you have to have patience and forgiveness for yourself. It's hard when you see people at your age or younger becoming successful.

It was a better time to be a young actor when I started out. There was a repertory system where you could go and practise.

You can act, or you can't. I'm sure a lot of people who are serious about acting would disagree, but I'm not really worried about them.

The skill set that I think we have as actors is so cool because they train you in ways that you never thought you'd be trained. And that's skills that they can't take back. So as you go further in your career, you can dump all these skills into things.