Stacy Keach Quotes

Actors can be many things - vain, venal, self-serving, obnoxious, bullies - but all of the good ones are great storytellers. I wanted to watch what my actors were doing and how they were telling the story.

I've always been an actor. That's my job — I can be anything you want me to be.

As far as being an actor is concerned, you have to have passion. If you're not bringing the passion of the character into the room with you, you might as well not come into the room at all.

In the story, I think as an actor you're just trying to fit into the world.

People watch me when I get into these characters that I have in my head, so perhaps I should try acting. So I did.

Acting is an imaginative leap, really, isn't it? And imaginations prosper in different circumstances. And it's being able - I can't tell you how one does, but one tries to read those circumstances correctly.

I came from stage in high school, and on stage you kind of overdo with putting on a character a little bit. Sometimes you become a character and sometimes the character becomes you.

When it's all said and done, I'm very, very glad to work in this business, but that's exactly what it is. It's a business, and I get to do the fun half of it. I get paid to pretend. I get to play really great characters. And, we have such a wonderful writer. She just knows people so intricately, and it's so fun to be able to act out her words.

I am really not of the school of naturalism. I like style, and you can use more style in theater than in film roles. I love to sink my teeth into a part.

A friend of mine had his own theater company, and he jumped me in like I was in a gang. And once I came in, it was just that simple. For the first time in my life, I felt, 'This is a career, this is a life that I think I can grow old doing.' It was love at first sight. I loved being on stage and reading these plays. It was great.

Every time you're on stage, you're acting.

It's always fun to play characters that are different from me.

You're just playing a role, whether it's a drama or a comedy. I find it really fun to sort of play opposite Uma.

To go on being an actor, you need sheer animal energy. If you can't restock your energy, you have to hide your lack of it.

I definitely feel like, as a singer, I've been able to transition into acting because I always saw them in the same vein. It's all about connecting and telling a story.

I knew how to act and had studied acting and enjoyed it, but I'd never pushed myself to really perform as an actor, and create a role, and have the whole character's backstory.

I played a role. That is what actors do. But I played it too well. I went too far. And by the time I wanted to stop, to take a bow and leave the stage, it was too late.

When I'm on stage, I'm not me playing me. I'm somebody else doing me. I could never go on stage and be like, "Hey, I'm Mike Tyson. My mother and father was in the sex industry." That's the politically correct way to say it, but I would really say, "My mother and father were pimps and whores. This is my life." I could never do that as Mike Tyson. Because I'd feel sorry for myself. But if I could be objective about it and be somebody else, portraying Mike Tyson, saying this story, then it's easy sailing.

Mine is an actor's voice, not a singer's voice, but the part was written for an actor (Richard Burton), not a singer.

Being an actor is easy, just picture someone in a room and you outside waiting for your cue to go in. Elliot Gould's been trying that for forty years.

I wanted to be an actor. Maybe a comic actor, but an actor. That's what got me into acting was putting on an act, because in life, I wasn't funny and I felt on stage or in the movies, I could do whatever I wanted to. I was free.

One of the things I love, more than anything, is jumping around and playing lots of different parts. I love the variety of playing different characters.

I do love being onstage. And I've always loved playing a character and being watched doing that.

It's not most important to communicate myself on stage as it is to be as funny or interesting as I possibly can on stage. I feel more like I'm doing a play whose main character just happens to share my name.

I don't really think it matters if you go into stage or TV as long as you do a bit of character work, really.