Anita Dobson Quotes

I do think you are mainly thrown into one medium as an actor, and then hopefully you grow from there.

I actually grew up hearing this a lot: 'If you're an actor, you can only be an actor, and you have to just do that.' But in order to be a good actor, you have to draw on life experiences. To only concentrate on acting, you're cutting yourself off.

I find that I'm just drawn to anything that's going to challenge me as an actress. So, anything that's going to help me grow.

I think it is important to keep redefining yourself as an actor with the roles you do and, at the same time, create diversity in your body of work.

I am not from a film family. I don't know much, but I definitely knew that if I want to be a good enough actor, I should be able to do any sort of role.

If you're a dancer, study singing.

I feel like any time you, as an actor, can be surrounded by other amazing actors, you can't do anything but grow.

The ability to stretch my range into all genres and characters is something I take great pleasure in doing. I thoroughly enjoy it. I consider myself a character actor, though some think of me as a leading man. As an actor, I love shifting gears from character to character, and the more range I can expand, the better.

I am capable of directing, and I am good at that. In order to have longevity as actors, you have to keep changing it up a bit; you have to bring other talents to the table. I want this to be another feather in my cap instead of replacing what I already have.

I think every role you do prepares you for the next one. Of course, 'Nashville' has been, and will continue to be, a huge learning experience for me as an actor. It's something that I grew a lot doing.

My dream as an actor growing up was always to challenge myself to different genres, different roles, and it's actually rare that an actor's given that opportunity to do that.

As an actor, you want as much variety as you can muster up. Otherwise you just keep playing the same chord over and over again.

I just want to do as many utterly different parts as I can get. Variety teaches you to act, and it keeps you fresh in your approach.

As an artist, I think it's important to always keep growing, and I definitely want to keep challenging myself.

I have my character actor side as a kid and my more leading man side. It's all been beneficial.

I think it's really important whilst you're a young actor to try as many new things as possible... to try and do something you haven't necessarily been seen doing before.

If you're not a real chameleon of an actor and if you're not one of those guys who can really shape-change themselves all the time, one of the ways to keep pushing yourself and keep changing is to be in different kinds of movies.

I'm growing as an artist and expanding my range, and not pigeonholing myself by doing the same thing, over and over.

There are lots of actors who are posh and stick with that, and there are lots of actors who are cockney, and that's what they do. That's fine, but I don't think that could be said about me.

I'm trying to show I'm a trained actress - I can transform myself into different characters. I'm not just an ingenue.

If I'm going to be honest with you, when I trained at school, I feel like I was training to be a chameleon. I want to be that versatile actor who can do anything - that's why you learn fifty different dialects, you do Shakespeare, you do commedia, you do it all so that if any job comes your way, you should be able to do it.

The first year at Juilliard is, I think, the best. And partly why I left - I only went one year. Partly why I felt okay leaving is that the most important elements, I believe, happen in the first year. What they do is they tear down all your conceptions of acting, and they take away all your tricks that you've learned.

Coming out of school, sometimes people can be theater snobs. I only wanted to do theater, highbrow stuff. But what I learned very quickly is there can be good material in every genre.

I'm not yet fortunate enough to take only the scripts that capture my fancy, but each one has to be a new experience, to put me in a light that audiences haven't necessarily seen me before.

As an actor, that's what you want. You want variety. I want to try things that I'm not used to and push my own envelope and see what I'm capable of.