Geraldine Page Quotes

I think that acting involves doing your job so well that you are able to help the viewer identify with the character.

I get to pick so many things as an actor. Also, I'm a good observer of people and their mannerisms.

If you're good enough to play a role with emotion and universal human elements, then you'll get others coming to you.

Basically, you're selling a world as an actor, right? I mean it's like any sales person: if you believe in your product, you know your product, you sell it a lot better.

Even when you are playing someone who is real, you get their mannerisms and you get their little quirks, but, it still has to be something inside of you that connects with the role, or else you will not be any good.

Action is drama. If we cannot make the audience laugh, smile or cry with us, we are not actors.

I loved doing all those costume dramas. I didn't think, 'Ooh I've got to avoid being typecast' - you can't ever be dictated to by what other people think. I just do things because I fancy the parts and the directors.

That's what acting is. You're pretending to be someone else.

I usually don't find myself reacting to my characters. I just create them ... And let the audience decide whether they're empathetic or scared or compelled to cheer me on.

Being an actor means asking people to look at you. I guess I accept that. But it's a profession in which the job is to show another world and other people. You may access it through bits of yourself, and your imagination and experience, but actually, in the end, you're not playing yourself.

I don't pick my roles by genre; that's kind of silly.

I take my time to get into the mindset of the character and say my lines. I really have to be the person that I am playing.

If a great part comes up and the guy's meant to have an Eastern European accent, great; but if it's a bad part I won't take it.

When you're playing a real character, you want to honor that person and receive inspiration from that person. They need to anoint you in some way that allows you to borrow just a small piece of their soul. That is the flame.

I knew that I could be more creative onstage, to state my own case and deliver my own interpretation of the role much more aggressively than in the recording studio.

Movie acting is primarily listening. If you're really engaged, that's all a movie audience wants to see is you processing what's happening in your world.

Well, usually when I finish one character, I'm looking for a role that's really different.

I don't care about sympathy. I care about playing a character who's understandable and clear.

Good actors can sort of see into people and immediately you have a chemistry with them or not. It's like an affair with no mess.

Listen, acting is not surgery, it's entertainment. You're doing something to hopefully move people, to make them laugh, to transport them. But actors are vulnerable, and the reason we're vulnerable is that we're always trying to recreate human behaviour.

Acting is not about dressing up. Acting is about stripping bare. The whole essence of learning lines is to forget them so you can make them sound like you thought of them that instant.

As an actor, what you dream of is being able to portray people that people empathize with and understand and really feel for.

When I'm offered a role, I look at what I think I can do with it. I look to see if I can project myself into it.

I think it's always easier to play parts that you have something concrete that you can relate to.

I always felt the play came first. If it didn't touch me, I'd say forget the part.