Sam Esmail Quotes

I use voiceover just like I use dialogue. There's a way to give out information or give out insight to the character or give out their worldview, and maybe you have to slip in exposition, but it's all about how you write it.

Nothing taxes an actor more thoroughly than a good audiobook.

As a young girl, I loved having stories read to me. There is something magical about narration and voiceovers. Recording a voiceover is an art form in itself.

With voice-over, you have to pretend like you're three, except you can talk and read.

I guess the biggest challenge to doing any kind of animation voice work is that you only have your voice to tell the story.

It's bad writing, however naturalistic it's written, that's where you have to do your best acting.

Sometimes, what's not said is just as important to the writing as what is said. As a writer, we have our voices heard. I think that, at oftentimes, the ability to allow the dialogue to recede properly into the world of the film is also a really valid sort of way to be a writer, I think.

If I'm serious, yes, I'd like to have done what Shakespeare did... to act and write. You learn so much from acting. One of our great writers, Alan Bennett, does both supremely well. When I write a story, I tend to speak it aloud as I'm writing it.

Movies don't look hard, but figuring it out, getting the shape of it, getting everybody's character right and having it be funny, make sense and be romantic, it's creating a puzzle. Yes, having been a writer for so long, I have an awareness of when things are going awry, but it doesn't mean I know how to fix them.

The first time I ever heard professional actors delivering lines that I wrote was completely surreal and was just a gigantic moment in my life. It was just a little bit mind-blowing and completely strange to have something that had been on my computer being said out loud.

If people need to be informed by lines, then there's no reason why the actor is saying the line except for information for the audience; I think there's something wrong.

And because performing for a game involves real acting. The way they create a game is very similar now to how they create a film. I've always wanted to stretch my acting skills, and the timing being what it is, I couldn't say no.

I was, aged nine, the go-to kid in Minneapolis for a commercial voiceover.

As an actor, there is room for a certain amount of creativity, but you're always ultimately going to be saying somebody else's words. I don't think I'd have the stamina, skill or ability to write a novel, but I'd love to write short stories and poetry, because those are my two passions.

I've been recording audiobooks for more than 30 years. I've recorded over 500 titles on all sort of things. I'm a sort of genre-free recording artist - classics and romances, I just finished a sci-fi book, self help... just all kinds of things.

Voice acting is very creative, especially 'Star Wars' voice acting, because there's so much you have to imagine.

There's nothing more important in making movies than the screenplay.

I'll tell you, Quentin Tarantino really writes the most amazing dialogue.

I'm a storyteller, I'm an actor, an entertainer.

I love doing the radio plays, creating a whole world with just the voice, and I'd love to be back on stage, too, at some point.

When the script is finished, and you're sitting around at a table read, and all the actors are reading the words that you've written, and you're hearing it out loud for the first time, that is always, every single time, no matter what, a magical process.

I learned so much from my life as an actor, as a kid actor through being an adult actor, and then becoming a writer and producer and doing animation.

Doing audiobooks is kind of an actor's dream because you get to play all the parts.

When I started my own podcast, I realized I definitely wanted to do characters.

Doing narration is a totally different art form. I do some video games, and some that I've done are iconic.