Jeremy Piven Quotes

People often argue about this. Obviously one of the skills in performance is acting, and you can't expect every Romeo to really be in love with their Juliet!

I've found acting on stage much more challenging than on screen.

I figured as I got older, the good roles for women would be in the theatre. So 15 years ago I started building a Broadway career to try and develop the chops to be accepted as a great theatrical actress.

It was always my dream to be a New York theater actor. I never thought I was pretty enough to be on camera.

Obviously, when you're in theater, you have to be in character. You have to prepare for the unexpected. You have to be able to react to things that don't necessarily happen every night, or aren't supposed to happen every night. And you have to react to it in character. In six months, 192 shows, those things did happen. And the experience of that, the ability to stay in character, I feel like I've learned a great deal.

I will do plays as long as they're interested in having me do them. It's the biggest opportunity to learn the most about how to act. Something I discover every time I'm doing one is how little I know about acting - how important the art of listening is, and how important it is to listen with your entire body. You can tell so much of a story with stillness, and a lot of that can be from really actively listening to your scene partner.

I'm a theater actress and I thrive on working with other actors, and you can't be even a smidge bad, when you're acting with Charlie [Sheen]. He's just so natural, so present and so good that you have to step up to his level, or else.

I feel like in a lot of ways I've gotten kind of soft as an actor, not doing stage stuff. In terms of being a better actor, it's really important.

To perform on stage, you have to run through your paces till you are perfect. Despite the script and director, the actor makes or breaks the play.

I've always enjoyed acting, and there's more than a degree of it involved in singing live on stage.

You'd be surprised how much being a good actor pays off.

I always liked performing. I always liked being in front of people. That's one of the things I loved about law; we had mock trials, and I got to go up and state my case. But I took an acting class, and after my first class, I was hooked.

I would like to be going all over the kingdom...and acting everywhere. There's nothing in the world equal to seeing the house rise at you, one sea of delightful faces, one hurrah of applause!

I'm not gonna become Ann Bancroft or Meryl Streep and have all the burden that being a "serious actress" entails.

Sometimes you can do Shakespeare and you're still not an actor.

Walter Matthau made all the big money and he was wonderful as Oscar Madison on the stage. You couldn't beat him. I know because I replaced him on Broadway. He was just delightful.

I played St. Jimmy on Broadway I sort of caught the acting bug. But I didn't want to go full-bore into it because I have a lot to learn.

Denzel [Washington] just knows the actor. He knows the process, and you don't often get that.

[Vincent Price] did Oscar Wilde on Broadway, and I think he probably did it because he was almost like an Oscar Wilde. He had that brilliant humor.

Everything that you do is a challenge. And acting is just building up your concentration and being able to listen and to do the ridiculous.

I couldn't direct traffic. It's hard enough just acting.

Many an actor does the stage more ham than good.

I think for acting on stage and in film, one informs the other. Obviously, they require really different kinds of discipline and really different kinds of work. It's more along the same continuum, for me.

There are different types of art, and you just have to follow where things take you. It helps me with my desire to perform live. That's something that a lot of actors and actresses don't get to experience on a regular basis.

I would love to do Broadway. I dont think theres anything more amazing than theater. OK, Supergirl is number one. Maybe I could be Supergirl on Broadway That would be perfect.