Francois Arnaud Quotes

I'm scared of rehearsals, I'm scared of doing all this because I don't feel like I'm an actress.

I don't think I can call myself an actress yet. I just don't think my skill level is that high. I hope that with every job it gets better. But until I'm good, I can say I'm trying to be an actor, but I don't think I've completely made it.

I like doing small parts, because I don't feel I'm that practised in acting. It's like making baby steps towards a bigger goal.

I am not an insecure person. For me, insecurity comes when something I do does not come across the way I thought it would. It would come if I had nothing more to say as an actor. I have a long way to go!

When I tested for Billy Budd, I had that kind of confidence that comes with the certainty that you're not going to get something. I was very rough around the edges.

I've never given a bad audition in my life.

I'm a terrible actor. I'm still learning. When I first started, I wish I knew then to trust myself more, really. I was in a terrible panic in the early part of my career.

I've been to acting coaches and everything, but they had to open me up and all that, so now I'm getting better with it.

I didn't know I was good enough to be a pro growing up.

When I first started my acting career, I only knew what my acting teacher taught me. When a director gave me an impromptu direction, I didn't know what he wanted me to do, and I wanted to escape from the place.

But yeah, it's funny because I used to talk so fast before 'Gilmore Girls' and it took me several years of auditioning and being comfortable in auditions to sort of take my time because I would just go into it and rush, rush, rush.

As I got older, I auditioned for drama school and shocked myself by getting in.

I'm a bit of a fraud, really, as I didn't study acting at a drama school.

After I began to explore what an actor actually is, I studied for three years before I had the guts to go on an audition.

I got into acting classes. I didn't want to just go by luck.

When I started acting, it was like a double identity crisis - your basic crisis, compounded by people saying, 'there goes Robards' kid, Bacall's kid.' Now I realize, sure, that gets your foot in the door, but once it's there, it's your foot. I'm not bothered anymore. I'm confident of my abilities.

There's never been a game plan, and I suppose I've had an uneasy relationship with my ambition. Someone who had been in my year at drama school once said to me that I was terrifyingly ambitious back then. Which was not at all what I felt at the time - I felt paralysed with shyness, though that evaporated.

I find acting conservatories really important. I've gone to four different ones, and all of them provided totally different tools for me.

Drama school can't make you a brilliant actor, but you can do stuff for three years - you're not going to be fired. You should just go for it all, even the stuff you think is codswallop.

Not everybody's confident their whole life.

I guess my break in America came a little too early. It would've been nice to have a few more years to find out what I'm like as an actor without a camera on my face.

I was terrible in my first play. After that experience, I had to face that I wasn't good enough to play with the big boys. I had to go away and learn, so I worked in regional theater for three years. I even understudied at the Kennedy Center.

Because I'd done 30 plays or so at Oxford, I thought that I was an actress anyway because that's what I was doing!

I don't know what I'm really good at. I'm really good at sittin' by the pool. I have to work at that. I'm really bad at auditioning.

You can be in an acting class all you want, but you don't fully learn until you get off that stage and in front of a camera.