Amy Sedaris Quotes

I have such respect for guest actors. They don't know all the characters as deeply as the regulars, and the cast isn't your family, so you have more at stake.

There are a lot of pros to doing a film, as far as it helping your film career, and it is completely different financially. But theatre is the only place where you get to actually be the character, and nobody is going to come around and change it later.

I was only interested in my scene, and I had to go through thousands and thousands of other scenes. I got my scene and I read it many, many, many, many, many times. That was my research.

I was delighted to have lines when they came - learning lines for film isn't a problem, but television is a little different, because we shot those shows the whole way through.

Soaps are the best. They really are. If you can do a soap, well, you can do anything. You have to learn pages of dialogue very quickly.

I find it hard to do small roles sometimes.

I think acting is overrated. I'm not sure I enjoyed it. You never get to write your own roles. It's wonderful for some people, but I found it nerve-wracking. I was too busy worrying that no one would give me their words to speak.

I'm just an actress. They try to give me as little information as possible.

I hope I don't have to act in one of my own projects again.

With acting, you can find a way to make it interesting for yourself, if nobody else - even on big-budget films. But you're very much on your own.

I'm not accustomed to doing films without seeing the script.

Most actors hate the feeling of being handled.

Before 'The Walking Dead,' a few of the jobs before that were just like, 'Ugh.' I try and make everything as creative as possible, even when I get the script and can't imagine what I'm going to do with it.

After passing out of the National School of Drama, I spent many years doing small-time roles in Bollywood.

I have been parts of some films in the South where I didn't expect certain shots to be shot in a certain way. I wasn't experienced enough; I was very naive. I didn't have the standing of an actor to say that I don't want to do this shot.

When I got the script for 'The Art of Seduction,' I realised I'd never been in a comedy, so I decided to experiment. What the character went through could never happen in my own life.

When you start out as an actor, you read a script thinking of it at its best. But that's not usually the case in general, and usually what you have to do is you have to read a script and think of it at its worst. You read it going, "OK, how bad could this be?" first and foremost. You cannot make a good film out of a bad script. You can make a bad film out of a good script, but you can't make a good film out of a bad script.

When I am making a film, I know what to do in front of a camera. What frightens me are the scenes with dialogue. Sometime they really want me to speak perfectly and I don't like that.

It's fun to act, but for me, it's more fun to actually create the character and act it out knowing that I know everything about this character. That's more fun to me than just reading lines.

I've never done coke or anything, and I've never played a character who has, so I don't know whether I would actually try coke if I had to play a character who took coke.

You never know what you're in for when you take a role. When you're reading the script, you're in some café in New York and you're loving life and it sounds great because it's like reading a book. When you step into that book and you actually have to play it out, for real, it's a totally different ball game.

Sometimes as an actor you're struggling to make things work. That was never the case for me with [Big Little Lies script]. It just kind of flowed out.

I've never played a manipulative, drug-smuggling lesbian before. For me, it's pushing me in an area that's great. There are days when I'd read the script and I'd be like, "Oh, God, I can't believe I have to do that."

I have a lot of trouble with scripts. I have a lot of trouble imagining things while I'm reading them.

I don't think there's anything that I would really baulk at doing on-screen. I don't think so. I've got certain pet peeves about writing... my pet peeve about reading scripts is when they give you a line reading and there'll be a line but next to your character's name it'll say 'very angry'. But I'm like: "Well, I'll decide that actually!" So, there's little things like that. That's a slight pet peeve.