Randy Harrison Quotes

Last tour my bass rig was breaking down every other night. That was a pain. We would get on stage and Trey would count off the song, and I'd play the first note and nothing would be there. Those guys would just roll their eyes.

But theatre is always a difficult experience.

I learned how to turn it on and turn it off. You learn that in theater, too, but for film work, I learned from doing 'Henry,' I learned how to leave work at work and go home. There's always spillover. Actors speak of this.

I love to take actors to a place where they open a vein. That's the job. The key is that I make it safe for them to open the vein.

As a person who performs on stage, it's good to be emotionally open. If you mess with someone when they are in that state, it's like you're messing with an animal when it's eating.

We ask actors to come to work ready to open a vein, to be emotionally thin-skinned. If someone screams, 'What about my coffee?' it's not about the coffee; it's because they're working in an emotional state. It ain't easy being an actor.

It turned out to be exactly that, but more challenging emotionally. I looked at it in a more physical way, having to act in a chair and move around. But it really was more emotionally challenging.

As an actor, you're naked emotionally; you're revealing yourself emotionally.

Many times I've sat with a camera and another actor and seen all their fears and insecurities and struggles. You want to support them and help them as much as you can.

I personally don't like to use as many effects because when you play live, something always goes wrong.

It's very difficult for me to speak about being an actor.

On TV, you have wardrobe fittings, you have four cameras on you at all times, and you're worried about your angles and your lighting and your shots.

It's such a stressful environment, I find, being an actor, being put in the chair and 'Touch this, that, and the other,' it's too much for me. I find it hard to tolerate that sort of stuff. If you're not enjoying it, don't do it. You're wasting everyone's time.

You sit there waiting for the RED LIGHT to go on. You could be sitting there for five minutes, waiting, while the producer talks to the engineer. Then the light goes on you know that you mustn't make a mistake for at least 4 minutes.

At the end of the day, you're handing your performance over. If a director says after a take, 'You know what, try it just really angry. Just get furious'... you're like, 'Well, I don't know if I want to give you that because I don't know if I trust what you're going to do with it.'

With a live performance, you feel nervous because there's a sense it could do well or badly based on how well you are performing, whereas the only variable with a film premiere is technical, which invariably you have very little control over, whether the sound is good, whether the acoustics of the room are good.

When an instrument fails on stage it mocks you and must be destroyed!

An example I love: Diwata auditioned for the school play by doing a big number from Once Upon A Mattress. I went home and my boyfriend plunked out the notes for me, and I had to learn and prepare that song just so I could learn and know how that feels. I've never had that kind of detail in a rehearsal process. Jason Moore is absolutely unbelievable.

A lot of people don't really understand what rehearsal's about. People are afraid they're gonna leave it in the dressing room, or you're gonna shoot your wad in rehearsal.

It's tough, acting. You have to walk two lines of a tightrope. There's the all-consuming fear of failure: I'm about to fall flat on my face. There's that and there's also confidence - you have to be confident in order to try things - and they fight each other all the time.

When I performed the songs in front of an audience at the end of each project and I knew the storytellers were in the crowd listening, that was hard.

Failure's hard. There's no way around. Bombing on stage never feels great. You feel judged, you feel alone. But then when your performance works, it's transcendent.

Singing was more of a hobby, and I was terrified of anyone's opinions. The only reason I kept doing it was because people responded positively, and if they hadn't I don't really know if I'd feel the same. I'm not into fighting for people's affections.

In the limelight I play it off fine, but I can't handle it when I turn off my night-light.

I don't even want to think of myself as an actor because it's such an insecure place to go.