Mike Nichols Quotes

I spent a lot of years just learning my craft and falling down in front of the camera.

Yes, I was actually an acting teacher for a while.

As an actor, my main focus is finding good writing and attacking a good role.

Meisner technique was different than anything I'd ever experienced. It's a really great way to be accountable to your craft and to yourself, but also it takes that kind of focus and dedication to learn anything.

It was really fun being in Tara's trailer, working on my lines. Tara is such an amazing actress. She's so good at what she does. I learned a lot from watching her.

And I taught acting for years, and without knowing it that was the real thing that started bending me toward directing.

I had an acting coach while I was doing the show and every week I could see my work improving. I really liked working on the show because I was learning new things every day.

On paper, actors are the dumbest group of individuals essentially out there. Most of us have not gone to college. However, we never stop learning. Because of what we do, we're constantly researching, constantly learning.

It's a funny thing. You sort of never figure it out with acting. You're always learning.

When it comes to the acting stuff, I like to show up for a couple days and kind of be outrageous and silly, and go back to my day job.

To be able to work with actors who are doing such good work, not only makes it easier for you, but it makes you better.

I was a student of Stella Adler and then later Lee Strasberg, and they were into sensory work. At its best, acting is not about words - even when the words are important.

Nothing can teach you what it's like to work on a film set, and the best education there can be for an actor is to walk up the street and observe human nature.

Acting classes, I guess, are good and I would like to maybe sometime take one. But I would feel like I was learning someone else's technique. I like mine.

I was raised in New York City and raised in the New York City theater world. My father was a theater director and an acting teacher, and it was not uncommon for me to have long discussions about the method and what the various different processes were to finding a character and exploring character and realizing that character.

I was doing the work I was capable of doing with my own native talent, but when I looked at actors like Marlon Brando, Jimmy Dean, Kim Stanley, and Geraldine Page, I knew that they knew something that I didn't know. I wanted to find out what that was.

I don't watch anything of mine much. I haven't gone to drama school, or college, either. I just like to watch other actors in action. I learned so much from working with De Niro. I'd be in a scene with him where I was supposed to be acting, and I was just watching.

I want to take acting lessons first. But I'd love to find the right film, a 'Breakfast Club' kind of thing.

Ryerson helped me because I was around acting all the time. It was pretty much all I thought about, even if I didn't really get to practice every day; I definitely thought about it. Actually a lot of it was just sitting and watching, especially in my last year, but I think a good actor learns from everything.

I am learning the grammar of acting on the sets. And I am happy that way.

I'm taking my time with the acting and learning as I go.

An actor will use every piece of information at their disposal, or a good actor will.

I was trained by Method acting teachers and we were taught that aside from whatever gift you may or may not have or the level of that gift, that you were obliged to know how to build a table. It's a craft. It's like being a ballerina or a violinist.

I'm the sort of actor who likes to talk about what we're going to do.

I think that different actors go about their preparation differently, but when it comes to acting, I use my imagination.