Dennis Muren Quotes

Actors, their greatest tool, their greatest resource is imagination. You can take things, power objects, you can recruit your dreams, you can access your memories and get there. So the idea is not to act but to just be.

I do get very involved in making a scene work without giving too much thought about how it affects the overall, which I think is hard to know in any case.

The fact that I like to make characters doesn't mean that I like to watch my characters being made, my performance.

Acting is the ability to dream on cue.

Ever since I was younger, I would make table reads at home where I would give fake interviews.

Every time you get on a stage or in front of a camera, the whole exercise is about imagination. You're constantly depicting something that doesn't exist, and trying to find the reality of it. Once you settle on that premise, everything else is a matter of degrees.

With any role, you're extending yourself and acting out things that never happened to you.

There's something really amazing about watching an actor like Michael C. Hall or Jennifer Carpenter, who are completely professional and do everything so brilliantly, but yet can have a really great time on set.

I was Aladdin, and then I was Captain Von Trapp from 'Sound Of Music' when I was 7 or 8, and then King Arthur. I was always the lead. I've always enjoyed being onstage, acting obnoxious, being someone that wasn't me, hiding behind a character.

I never get scared making these kinds of movies because it's all make-believe, but I did cry when I saw the finished version of Man On Fire because it is so sad.

Acting is an imaginative leap, really, isn't it? And imaginations prosper in different circumstances.

I'm an actor. Whether I'm on stage, in front of a camera or a microphone, what I do is the same - although with videogames it requires a lot of imagination.

My approach as an actor has always been the same, in that the greatest gift that you're ever going to have is your imagination because you're not going to have all life experiences. So you draw on things that are sort of close to it but you spend your time expanding on it or drawing something specific on whatever your situation is.

I think acting really helps as a director. It's just no question, because you totally understand the acting process.

My training was that you fill in the canvas where it needs colour and polishing. You start with the words on the first night and keep adding bits of business.

There was only one elective at my college for acting, but thank God for that elective because we had a great teacher who introduced me to the Meisner technique for acting. Once I read that book, I said, 'Wow, if I could do that and have that honest moment on stage, that would be amazing.'

Beyond any role that I ever had, really early on as a stand-up, I would see actors decide to try it and they would bomb miserably. What I realized was that stand-up, acting and writing are all their own disciplines.

I love to act because I love trying on other people's skin.

What I love about acting is that you are exposed to so many different things. Horse-riding, sailing, travelling to amazing places.

In discussing the process with the actors, I made it clear to them that they could improvise but that the sum total of their improvisation needed to impart certain plot points, and schematic material.

As an actor, some of the most fun days I've had on set have involved shooting blanks all day - or better yet, on a micro-budget indie shoot in Texas, shooting live ammo. I feel guilty admitting this, but make-believe beating a man half to death for nine hours can also be strangely satisfying and, dare I say, good fun.

Doing animation is closer to pretending than anything else you get to do. It's much more like when you're a kid putting on a character.

The magic doesn't come from within the director's mind, it comes from within the hearts of the actors.

I like working with kid actors because they surprise you constantly. I mean, all actors do - but kids particularly.

If you have a very good concept of your character, you can snap into it.