Stacy Keach Quotes

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.

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

I never thought I would sing or dance - ever, ever, ever. My idea was to be Laurence Olivier or Peter Lorre or some great classical actor. I thought I'd be a character actor.

Forget about hair or our appearance. My acting style is different from my other colleagues.

As an actor you get categorized by other people, but it's not like I arrange myself into comedy mode or serious mode. If it's good writing you just have to play it true - if it's funny, it's funny. But obviously you don't want it to be amusing if you're playing Hedda Gabler!

My goal has been to be a great character actor.

I started being interested in acting when I heard the voices of Sir Laurence Olivier and Sir John Gielgud and Sir Alec Guinness. I've had the great privilege of working with Sir Derek Jacobi and Sir Anthony Hopkins. These are people who inspire the work that I do.

It was a wonderful experience to live the life for a year; to spend all day doing Shakespeare and then do a play in the evening.

Until Genevieve I had tended towards the more dramatic type of role.

If you catch me saying 'I am a serious actor', I beg you to slap me.

As an actor, when you encounter a psychopathic personality, you naturally want to make him 'bigger than life,' as the Americans say.

I always enjoy impersonating my characters in the first-person singular.

I have a background in theater. At the time I read 'The Loved Ones' script, I was playing Catherine the Great of Russia onstage. Straight after that, I played Stella in 'A Streetcar Named Desire' and Isabella in 'Measure for Measure.'

My dream as a youngster was to be like Olivier. To be a great stage actor. To be a great Shakespearean actor. To me that is the Olympics of acting.

An actor is someone who pretends to be somebody else. A movie star is somebody who pretends that somebody else is them.

I'm the man who sits behind a table and tells true stories from his life. I'm also an actor. I was trained as an actor at Emerson College, and I use that training to play myself.

I think I would not be described as a character actor in that I don't take on characteristics which are very alien to me.

I've always been a material-based actor. That's what I've done, the choices I've made - like a heat-seeking missile.

The process of doing plays will make you an actor.

I will never forget the pleasure and instruction I derived from working with a true master of his art, such as Edward G. Robinson was - and is. Surely his record for versatility, studied characterization - ranging from modern colloquial to the classics - and artistic integrity is unsurpassed.

I wanted to be on the stage, doing very important emotional roles.

I'd started going to acting classes at 14, played 'Medea' at 15 and really wanted to be a classical actress.

I didn't even know what a mark was, but I fell in love with acting.

You end up going to school plays quite a bit as a parent, there are a lot of kids who are doing the job as well as they can, but there's always one or two who seem much more at home in the world of impersonation.

I'm more an actor who can dance and sing if I absolutely have to. I studied theatre in college, but I studied drama, but I don't have that Broadway voice, and I'm not a trained dancer or anything like that. I identify mostly as an actor first and foremost.