John Lithgow Quotes

For me, all you want from your actor is for them to engage on a deeply emotional level with the material. If you feel like that happens, directing the actors is pretty much done at that point.

Basically, the way you get into any role is just doing research on the type of character you're playing.

The least amount of info actors get, the better. Actors are always like, 'What is my motivation for this?' You didn't write it. Just say the lines.

The trick to acting is not to show off, it's to think the thoughts of the character.

Obviously, in theatre, you work chronologically, so you kind of know where your emotions are supposed to be, and you're always on top of things, and as an actor, you always know what's coming next.

As an actor, your first priority is the work - immersing yourself in the role, backstory, and bringing that to screen.

As an actor, you can't play a flashback; you can't play someone's memory. You just have to play each circumstance as if it was real and understand that person's point of view.

I think my concerns are the same as every actor. Can I find this character and make it come to life properly?

Jeff Bridges taught me a lot about how to keep a scene fresh.

I'm a technician. I don't go for the get-into-the-role stuff. I read the lines and play the scenes.

Well, it's more of a sane life to be part of an ensemble! I find that the work can be more specific too and I have to really make sure I know where I am in the story because I'm not in every scene.

I do not use any set methods, not even The Method. The character after all is in the lines.

In choosing any role, I ask the same questions: what kind of part is it? is the role challenging? does the director have a vision? is the story moving? etc.

What I mostly do is take the script, analyse the hell out of it, see what's in there, see what kind of person I'm dealing with, and then forget I'm playing a father and just play a person who exemplifies all those things.

It's kind of up to the actor to deconstruct the scene and deconstruct the character and figure out how to make it real. That's what I love about this job: It's sort of a puzzle each time, and figuring that out is sort the key, whether I'm playing a cop or a killer.

I demanded two weeks of rehearsal because to me as an actor, that's the most important time.

It's not a matter of learning lines. It's a matter of getting into the ideas and the will of the person. It's a matter of, 'What does he want to do? What does he want to achieve?'

As an actor, I like to get a bit of momentum going with a character and kind of work a bit quicker. I mean, not crazy-fast, but, you know, five or six pages a day is a nice pace.

You can't just tell actors, especially young ones, to 'act happy' and expect them to do it. They must in some essential way be happy.

Part of an actor's job is to draw up a back story.

I do build my own backstory as an actor. It's important to know where your characters have come from in order to know where they're going - in order to exist in that state of being.

I try to really focus on the actors I'm working with and kind of read and respond to their behavior.

Scene study is isolated. I suppose it's interesting, but I don't think it really teaches you about a throughline. A throughline is something you feel when you do one scene followed by another followed by another.

I feel like most actors just dig and dig and work and work in whatever way they do to try to do as much as they can to portray a character in the limited time they have to play it, whether it's six months or one month or one week of work, you know.

I don't have an 'actor cry.'