Jeffrey Wright Quotes

Actors know one thing: If you're left just with words, you're in trouble.

Sometimes the writing can be so good that the actor doesn't really have to do anything.

I just want the actors to put their faith in the language. Just let the words do the work.

Acting is doing, because everything you say or do is some kind of an action, some kind of a verb. You're always connected to the other person through some kind of action.

Sometimes you can just hear the actor in the language.

Dancing came easy for me. Acting came hard.

That's the thing about acting - you can't fake it.

The writing is important, but the way you say the line and the pause you give it, the facial expression - all of that is very important.

Quite often in acting, you have to play a certain part; you cannot speak as much as you want to speak.

It's all performing; that's what we do in life. We talk, we look, and we hear, and we listen. Your life is a performance.

Good acting is consistency of performance.

I would rather do a play because it's instantaneous. You go on the stage, and you know whether it's happening or not. Somebody asked me 'What is acting?' And I said, 'Acting is listening.' And if you ain't listening, nobody's listening.

As an actor, what you really want to do is communicate with people - this is my aim, my principle aim.

Acting is very immediate.

For film and TV, try to have a more conversational tone. For stage, you'll need better diction and bigger vocal production.

I think the hardest thing I've had to learn is that just because people might speak a certain way in real life doesn't mean it's engaging in the theater.

As an actor, you're always looking for, what do I get to do? It's not just what do I say, but what do I do, too.

That's what acting is. You're not alone. It's reacting. That's what we do.

Being on 'The Office' prepared me for drama. Comedy got me ready, but once you get down to it, they're two sides of the same thing. I mean, the delivery has to be different - in drama, there's more time to breathe, and comedy's all about hitting the joke.

As an actress, I should be playing my parts with conviction; otherwise, the audience won't be convinced.

I think the actor has two responsibilities. One is to be visually compelling, and the other to recite the lines as written by the writers.

The pitch is the most important thing for us: not the words, not on paper.

Acting is about finding truth and finding the way to convey the truth.

I think acting, for me, is about play. It's about time, and it's about feeling, like there's a story to tell and I can tell it through my body and my voice.

Theatre is the principal job of an actor. An actor's job is to tell a story to someone in a room. TV and film can be great and I really love doing it, but it is a different way of telling a story.