Shannon Lee Quotes

Ronald Reagan was the best Ronald Reagan ever, and Ronald Reagan was a cool guy. You're not Ronald Reagan. You can't run as him; you can't relive his career. You can't just have somebody else's career. You have to be you.

When you are cast for a role, it's because of everything that makes you who you are in that moment in time. No one else has that. That's a unique, powerful thing to hold.

When a writer tries to copy another writer, it's doomed to fail.

We all have idols. Play like anyone you care about but try to be yourself while you're doing so.

I'm trying to have my own thing, and I don't know if it's even possible. I didn't realize so many people actually think I'm trying to be like my dad. I read comments like 'She's no Elvis.' I'm not trying to be. I never set out to be.

I realized that I could try to sound like Waylon Jennings, or I could try to be like Waylon Jennings... but it's impossible to do both.

It's really hard to copy another actor and be successful. In fact, that's usually the reason people are not good, because they're copying something they've seen, but, for some reason with their face and their body, it doesn't work.

Those who do not want to imitate anything, produce nothing.

Anybody with money can put on a KISS show, but they can't be KISS.

I'm into emulation, not imitation.

It is better to fail in originality than to succeed in imitation.

I have less than no interest in trying to replicate another brilliant actor's work, thank you very much.

Yeah, it's nice to look up to people, but the more you try to be somebody else, the less you are of yourself.

There will never be another Frank Sinatra. I never wanted to be another Frank Sinatra. I only wanted to be another Michael Buble.

I'm particularly drawn to actors in their own little drama. I find it's that area I'm very alive to. And I don't encounter it that often. You have to be far from civilization, you have to be far from New York or London to find people who do that.

The best thing an actor can bring to a role is himself - that's no secret.

When you put something out there into the world, there's all these words you don't want to hear, that you hope people don't say. I don't like anything that starts with 're' - like retro, reinvent, recreate - I hate that. It's always like living in the past - copying, emulating.

If you try to create someone else's performance, it becomes a facsimile of a facsimile.

I have never emulated any star or celebrity completely, and I hope nobody does the same of me.

I certainly wouldn't want to be a Mini Me of any of the people whose footsteps I've followed in.

Adopting mannerisms is called mimicry. That is not a good way to do things. You don't start to imitate somebody, the way he walks and talks, that is a very irrelevant element of acting.

When I started acting in my twenties, a director on the set of an action film shouted, 'Just do it like your dad would.' I couldn't. I can only do things as I'd do them.

I hope we go down in history for being something more than just another famous act that got ripped off.

Being in somebody else's thing and saying their words and not having any right to change it - I don't know how I'd deal with that. I'd like to think I could do it, but I just know I've got a dead particular taste.

I used to watch everybody's stuff, but I found I would get slightly influenced by the other comics. I try to avoid it now.