Tim Matheson Quotes

I like to think of myself as an actress, I think of going through all of the films as my kind of film academy, the way that I've learnt.

Acting gets into your blood, after so many years, and I just always like revisiting it. It's fun to meet new people and watch them coming along, at different stages of their careers.

I always knew I wanted to be an actress, and I had the attitude that I would learn more under people like Samuel L. Jackson, Laurence Fishburne or Mike Myers than from someone who had never starred in a movie. I just didn't think that someone who had never been in a movie could teach me how to act in one.

People say, "Why is it that you love to act?" And you want to say, "Well, most of acting is sitting in your trailer, either bored or worried about the scene coming up." A lot of it is about things you don't really like, so it's a wonder why acting is such a huge draw, why everyone loves it so much.

One of the greatest things I've learned, as an actor, was how to talk to actors.

I was trained to be an actor, not a star.

Central to being an actor is pretending, and the adventure of it all. That's why you become a junkie for different kinds of situations.

I'm so not a performer, my drive to do [acting] is so different to other people - and I'm not discrediting that, they're born performers, they're people that you love to watch just be themselves. I like to be a little bit more in control. I like to make something.

I mean, acting or stunts, doing my job means doing my job, and I'm loving it. It's fun to put my face in front of the camera; I'm really enjoying the process. But at this point, it's still just not too easy to go around describing myself as an actor. It took me a good long while to get to where I could do it not only without laughing, but without trembling a little bit, which is terrible, but... I mean, I was really hesitant to 100 percent walk down that path, to expose myself to that.

I just love actors, and I've always loved actors. I empathize with their job. Everyone thinks it's easy, and it ain't. To be that vulnerable and brave on camera is tough.

I am forever grateful that I got some training in the theater - it reduces performance anxiety.

Acting is the least mysterious of all crafts. Whenever we want something from somebody or when we want to hide something or pretend, we're acting. Most people do it all day long.

What I've discovered is, really, acting is acting is acting. It's all the same. Seventy-five percent of the skills are the same in both media.

It's fashionable for modern actors to talk about getting 'inside' a character. But you can't get to the inside without getting the outside right first.

[On being an actor] .nothing more than a worker in a service occupation . It's like being a waiter or a gas station attendant, but I'm waiting on 6 million people in a week if I'm lucky.

I regret not having enough training, I trained for a year at The Royal Court, but I very quickly went off to do films and television.

I used to put that I studied with Stella Adler on my resume. I never met Stella Adler. But if you told a casting director you studied with Stella Adler all the sudden they'd let you in the door.

I love acting, but I don't know if I'll ever get used to it.

Acting is like sex: you either do it and don't talk about it, or you talk about it and don't do it. That's why I'm always suspicious of people who talk too much about either.

I've always had an itch for acting and a passion for acting, but never really got to dabble into it too much, and now I can say I'm officially an acrtress.

The actor must know that since he, himself, is the instrument, he must play on it to serve the character with the same effortless dexterity with which the violinist makes music on his. Just because he doesn't look like a violin is no reason to assume his techniques should be thought of as less difficult.

Almost everything I learned about being an actor came from those early years at the Actor's Studio.

I wanted to be an actor my whole young life. My dad was an actor, obviously - he won an Academy Award, but I had no idea what was involved. I had all the wrong ideas about acting.

You learn from the actors that you're working with. I've taken a lot from all of them.

I do just want to be an actor. The thing I get out of it is actually doing the job and inhabiting the world and the role - and I mean that genuinely. That's what I'm in it for.