Gretchen Mol Quotes

I started as a writer; I started writing when I was little. The acting and directing was an outgrowth of my desire to tell stories.

It’s more than just saying lines and turning the light on. You have to drive the story - there’s a technical aspect.

Well, it was very interesting to play a character and stretch it over such a long time - 12 episodes. I had never done a TV show before, so week to week it was unclear what we would be asked to do.

Even as an actor, I think like a storyteller. My parents raised us to look at the script.

I feel 'Breaking Bad' - maybe everybody says this about their show - I feel like this show is so special that I don't 'know' that I necessarily really know what it's like to do a regular show.

One of the things I really love about TV is this symbiotic relationship you can get between the writers and the actors, and the characters start to come to life because you start to collaborate.

Acting is contained - you act for three months, then leave it - but writing is the act of creation. Writing is dangerous.

My number one passion is acting, but I also think there's something so special in being able to support a script and an idea and take it all the way through to fruition. I think that process is so rewarding.

I think what makes a good actor's director is the same thing that makes a good director. Acting is just one of the trades necessary to make a movie.

As a child, I was fascinated by the stories of Dickens acting out everything in front of the mirror as he wrote it down. Later, when you approach his work as an actor, you notice how sayable the dialogue is.

What's great in theater is that you can sustain the arc of a character for a full three hours, whereas in film or TV, you have to create that arc in little pieces, and usually out of sequence.

Being an actor started me writing, and that led to directing.

Once you see the entertainment world from both sides, you really get a greater understanding of how it all operates. As an actor going into screenwriting, I was able to understand what type of dialogue feels natural and what an actor could actually say.

The writers are the backbone in television, like in film, but eventually, as an actress, I can bring something.

The interesting thing about doing serial television is that the character is growing separate from you, the character and the show are growing, and you get to observe that and participate with it in a way that I think is actually really exciting for an actor.

I like making people feel things. Acting doesn't seem like lying but like storytelling.

I love the theater because it's alive. It's a beginning, a middle and an end, and it begins a life.

When you're in a good play and a good production, you find that you're in something that has a life beyond you. You think, 'Oh my goodness, this play's alive.'

Theater is the best. That's where you get the work done. You just really get in there and figure something out about a story or a character or life or the world. That's where magic stuff happens.

It's a neat experience to go from the blank page to an actor elevating it to the audience understanding it - the full life of that is why I became a writer.

Every day, I learn something new. I think one of the most exciting things for a writer is to work on a TV show. It's like a novel. You have a really long time to develop and learn about the characters, and you can just really keep digging in deeper, every week.

There tends to be this hierarchy of film and television, and theater is somewhere else in its own milieu. However, as actors, yes, we love to do theater because it's our story. Nobody can edit it, the curtain goes up, and it's ours for two hours or three, or whatever. And we tell it.

When you have a book as material as it is, it's a lot easier to create a character because you have so many resources to draw upon when acting.

For me, acting is like a therapy. I can express myself fully when I am acting and have blood in my veins. Even when I'm not working, I'm always living in my own world, imagining characters.

I think when I was doing 'Amistad,' I was just too young to really understand what the process was, and beyond that, I hadn't really got involved. It was just somehow - and I thought that the artistry was all in the theater.