Drew Barrymore Quotes

I'm not one of those people who can cry on cue. If I have to cry in an audition, I'm like, 'Okay, let me see what I can do.'

Like any creative human being, I would like a bit more control so that it would be a little easier for me when the director says, 'One tear, right now,' that one tear would pop out.

Actors walk around wearing these little tool-belts of acting skills. And I just don't find that interesting to watch. I never want to see someone who clearly can cry at the drop of a hat. That's so uninteresting.

In my years of acting, the one thing I was never able to do convincingly was to laugh on camera. Fake-laugh.

Sometimes fake laughing is hard once you've done a scene 18 times. I don't want to brag, but I have a reputation for being very, very good at that. It's funny finding what's challenging about acting as you go.

I don't have an 'actor cry.'

It's funny because, if you're not an actor, people always tend to say, 'How do you memorize all those lines? Is that really hard?' I'm always like, 'That's just a small part of it. I have to seek my craft and my emotions' - you know, all this gross, actor-y stuff.

Bad actors try to cry, and good actors try not to. Bad actors try to laugh, and good actors try not to.

There is an art to acting, and there are techniques that are acquired. You can be as emotional as you'd like, as a person, but figuring out ways that you can bring specific emotions at specific times and have them be true, and relating to someone as someone that they're not, is a lot.

I found it more challenging to act in a small scene, especially if it has no dialogue and if it is a close-up with only expressions.

I think a lot about the editing of the films when we're making them, partly because I studied that, and partly because if you think about being in love while you're supposed to be acting in love, there's nowhere to go. You have to focus on something else and then do what's being asked, and you might get some semblance of something interesting.

When you're on set and you professionally listen to what the other actors have to say, then the emotion is naturally evoked.

I've been in scenarios as an actor where you have to manufacture an emotion that's not really there, but it wasn't hard with Halle because she's a great person and very beautiful, so it ain't a tough job at the end of the day.

Playing a drunk doesn't mean being a drunk, only bad actors try to be drunk. A real drunk tries to be sober, he wants another drink. How a character hides their feelings tells us who they are, no one shows their feelings except bad actors.

The important thing in acting is to be able to laugh and cry. If I have to laugh, I think of my sex life. If I have to cry, I think of my sex life.

Indian actors know how to shout with the eyes.

I'd prefer not to act in the film I'm directing. I think, though, as an actor, you do learn how to turn things on and off quickly and kind of compartmentalize. You learn to accommodate the camera and the other actors, to notice where the boom is and where you mark is, and be able to repeat something a few times.

As Uta Hagen would say, there's the representational actor and the presentational actor. My sister [Maggie Gyllenhaal] came up to me recently after she saw this movie, Southpaw, the movie I did, and she thought there was this exploration of that type of presentation, and a bit of representation as well, if I could be totally honest, where she was deeply moved.

If the boy have not a woman's gift To rain a shower of commanded tears, An onion will do well for such a shift.

Laurence [Fishburne] is a great example of how to communicate to the audience as you're acting with another actor.

Very often, when you're playing people who love each other, or who hate each other, you manufacture those feelings. You have to do that a lot.

It's fashionable for modern actors to talk about getting 'inside' a character. But you can't get to the inside without getting the outside right first.

It's not like I prepare anymore, or have to think about my son being dead to get emotional. If you're working with a good actor and you're reacting off of them and you have a good script, it just comes organically. It's just stored in your body. So that emotion will just be brought out of you, as opposed to trying to force it.

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 may not be a great actress but I've become the greatest at screen orgasms. Ten seconds of heavy breathing, roll your head from side to side, simulate a slight asthma attack and die a little.