Michael Emerson Quotes

I've done a lot of theater, and I know that it's a different audience each time who doesn't know the story, and we have to tell it.

It was a wonderful experience to live the life for a year; to spend all day doing Shakespeare and then do a play in the evening.

I just did a play in New York which has been my best experience that I've had for maybe ever. It was Paul Weitz's play called Privilege and I was in New York for three months.

Well, I go to the theater today, and its curtain - there is no curtain in this play; the lights go down and go up - and we start. And I live this character for two hours. There are only two of us in the play. And It's a complete experience.

You just have to play the character.

When we play the fool, how wideThe theatre expands! beside,How long the audience sits before us!How many prompters! what a chorus!

I'm naturally shy but I've done this [movie Salomaybe] so much and you get better at it than you would think.

I think theater has given me the opportunity to show what a character actor I can be.

In terms of trying to improve as an actor, for me it's always important to return to the stage. After doing a piece of theater for a prolonged period, I can think I must have surely improved in some way as an actor - you must be fitter than you were prior to doing it. For me, theater is very, very important in keeping things fresh and dangerous.

This is a movie version of the play [All the Way]and when Bryan [Cranston] was on stage the bigness of the man was played to the back of the house. When we turned the cameras on that, it changed a bit with close-ups, but we got just as much power in that beautiful intimacy.

Of course, you can never watch something like somebody else watches something like you, but nonetheless, you have to try. So I think on camera you learn a lot about how much the camera does for you, which is what is the great luxury of movie acting. Or acting whether it's TV or movies or whatever it is, that the camera's really such a gift because there's so much that it sees and does if you're willing to just be open and expose yourself and all of that. So you also learn what doesn't matter. And sometimes when you think about things, you think things matter that don't matter.

I love acting. I love play-acting. I love pretending. I love telling stories so whether they be comedic or serious or whatever, it doesn't really matter to me. I enjoy telling a good story. I have it all in me.

I hate actors. They never act like people. They just think they do

As an actor, I feel like I'm somebody who, when somebody gives me a mark, I don't want to hit it. I don't like that. But then, without even knowing it, I just hit it.

One of the first roles I had on stage was with a brilliant director in a brilliant play with a brilliant cast, but I just couldn't find my way into the heart of the character. I found myself straining a lot. When it started. I felt lost. That was the Eugène Ionesco play Rhinoceros. I don't think I was prepared for that. I don't think I had the full tool kit to do it justice. It's a very difficult play, it's an extraordinarily difficult part, and I never felt I really got it right. Far from it. To a degree, Hamlet was the same.

Because 98 percent of our ideas are not great ideas, or everyone would be a billionaire. So yeah. That's something people have had a lot of experience in: being told our idea is bad or our performance is bad. I think that's the one common thread between all working actors is that they have a pretty thick skin - or you'd like to hope. You're used to rejection, that's for sure.

I'll never forget John Heard doing Shakespeare In The Park with Raul Julia and Richard Dreyfuss. It was 30 years ago, I guess. It was Othello, and John Heard played Cassio, and while everyone else was "Acting!" Heard came on talking normal, and everyone in the audience was leaning in to follow him. I wasn't doing that in Bus Stop. I think in that performance, I was putting it out a little too much.

I think insanity is the hardest thing to play.

When you play a character with power and energy, people lock into that and go, "Oh, this must be the guy."

I just feel my way through. If I had to give an acting class, I wouldn't know what to do.

To play well the scenes in which we are 'on' concerns us much more than to guess about the scenes that follow it.

Chris Addison is a stand-up comic, but his ability to act is extraordinary, to be so natural, I've taken 25 years just getting to that level.

All you really have when you're acting is the confidence and your ability to manage and tell a story by creating a character.

I can't walk very well, but I'm not onstage to do walking. I'm on the stage to play.

Performers love to perform - that's the thing that we do. I think one of the best things was being able to imagine anything that I wanted, anything that I came up with we could do, because this theater is unbelievable.