Steve Coogan Quotes

If you're not doing something right, you can feel it on stage, and if it isn't going well, the audience will tell you. A teacher can teach you sense memory and this and that, but until you get in front of an audience, you don't really feel it.

The one thing for an actor that is complete death is if you're bored, because that boredom will show in your work.

A lot of actors find it impossible not to ask for the audience's sympathy. They have a need to twinkle.

If it's a 50-seat theater, I am neurotic about whether I'm doing an honest performance. Sometimes I walk away happy enough with it. You know, it can always be better, but sometimes I'll walk away distraught, feeling like I missed the pulse of the character that evening.

I am so used to being up on stage and talking to my fans that it's strange to be on stage and be someone else. I can't look at the audience during 'In the Heights' or I will start talking to them.

A stage actor has to be 10% aware of the audience as he's performing.

There's something about being in a house with an audience, and having that immediate feedback. I started acting because of that energy; it's what feeds me on stage and informs my choices.

The next day I was in my school's production of All My Sons. This was the performance where I realized something was happening between me and the audience that I hadn't recognized before.

In theater, the wellspring of the character comes from the doing of it, like a trial by fire, but in front of an audience.

As an actor, you know when you've got great material in front of you. When you're working, you think, 'Is this the one? The one that everyone will respond to and be moved by?' You pray that you have told the story well... that your peers will see it and audiences will love it.

The Guthrie Theater is a beast. It has 1,300 seats, and I couldn't act there. I always felt I was acting too small. I'd always have to fight to get the gumption to act bigger. There's a weird trick to it. You don't want to overwhelm the first six rows. You don't want to starve the back. I could never get it.

It's important for an actor to feel like they're really being watched and to receive feedback and encouragement about the aspects of what they're doing that feels truthful - and also to raise awareness when they might be resorting to habits and tricks, which every actor has.

I'm able to look the person acting across from me and respond to that. There are times when it becomes so lonely and painful, but I think I'm able to overcome them because I realize that the more fiercely you prepare for a role, the more the audience can feel it.

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.

I get very competitive, mostly in acting though. When I'm going out for a role or something, that's when I really get very territorial about things.

My goal has been to be a great character actor.

I want to break into the acting industry. It's something I have a great deal of respect for; it's a passion of mine. It's so amazing, the differences between acting and being an athlete, but the one commonality is they both evoke emotion in the viewer. And those emotions are real. So I think that's pretty cool.

As an actor, you need everything you can get to be truly scary and truly memorable.

The acting is better when you know your material is being judged.

I can never wink at the audience.

I'm sort of one of those weird actors who whenever I do a play, I think, 'Oh, we should film this,' as opposed to have to belt it out of ourselves in a theater auditorium.

I feel so much at home onstage and so comfortable in my body.

I played Romeo when I was younger, and I think I did a couple kind Romeo-like parts after that, and I kind of went, 'I mustn't do this again. I must always choose something that I don't know if I'm a good enough actor to play.'

I never pretended to be a great actor.

I don't know, on a sitcom, and in theatre especially, you have to really be listening to an audience. And if you're losing them, you can hear the sniffs, and the playbills shuffling and whatnot.