Joanna Kerns Quotes

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

'Hollyoaks' is where I learnt a lot of the craft, being in front of a camera six days a week. That's certainly an experience you don't get in drama school. It invites you to be comfortable in front of the camera.

Like any other actor, I draw on life experience.

My advice to young actors is probably to do some theatre; definitely do that. I keep running into these actors who have never been on stage, and it's invaluable for an actor. What you will learn about yourself is huge.

As an actor sometimes you can be a bit emotional and forceful, and that's not always the way to be.

In acting, you draw so much on your private life.

I went through this realization that acting, at its heart, is the ability to manipulate your own emotions.

My acting coach makes the impossible accessible.

I've always considered myself a character actor. That's the way I was trained, really.

I consider myself an actor that tries to have as many tools as possible in the bag. And I think that includes the method, then of course it includes some improv techniques, and includes all kinds of different things, because you never know when you're going to have to work on something and in what way.

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.

Luckily, on 'Kyle XY,' I had great training in being tough and vulnerable at the same time.

As actors, when we keep working every day, after a point of time, we just know all our emotional cards and how to play them.

I sort of thought acting was just about arranging your face into emotions. I didn't realise it was about actually allowing yourself to feel the feelings, then letting your face follow. That was a big learning curve.

For me, it was much more important to continue to learn my craft as an actor and get a bit of flesh on the bones.

So many actors get caught up in their technique, and to be honest, I see it really getting in the way. I see them forcing things. I definitely do my best work when I'm free of that. But I think as an actor, I work really hard in preparing the roles.

You see some of these actors, they have a permanent smile on their face. How can they do that? It really fascinates me.

Everyone brings their own particular skill set to the job, and acting training can work for a lot of actors, and it can't. I've seen a lot of really good actors go into acting schools and then come out a little bit corrupted.

That is one of the first things my family, my mother and my grandfather, had taught me about acting: 'Use your eyes!' Not being able to do that physical aspect of it, and having to put it all into your voice? That was a little bit of a challenge.

The imagination is part of the arsenal that actors draw from.

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.

I recommend doing some sort of acting class, something that can eventually get you in front of an agent or a manager, and practice is very important.

I trained in Toronto with a private acting teacher, who was wonderful, for years growing up.

I hardly knew anything when I first arrived. I had to learn how to act as I went along. After about a year I got a grip on what acting was all about and it started coming straight from my heart; I wasn't just saying the words any longer.

I really think that studying theater early on really helped me to be able to identify how to get into a character, because it's such a mysterious thing. Learning objective acting in the beginning of my career was the best thing I could have ever done.