Danny Aiello Quotes

I'm probably one of the worst actors as far as preparation goes, because I actually don't prepare. I find it easier to read the script and whatever hits me in my stomach, like deep down, I just go with it. And the director kind of molds me whether to go right or left with it.

Actors should be instinctive and spontaneous. If you think about acting, you're not going to be good.

I'm the sort of actor who doesn't really prep a lot - I don't do a lot of research for parts. I just go for it, and I usually pull through.

I just want to do shows because you get to see, over all the seasons, the person grow, and you get to grow with the character. That transformation, for me, is what I love about my job. I get to learn about myself and challenge myself and grow with the character. For me, it's a whole process of learning and growing.

I don't rehearse a lot. I try to keep it organic. Even in movies, the less I rehearse, the better I am.

I work with my instincts. I don't have a process that I learned in an acting class whereby I break a script down or whereby I do a certain kind of research.

It's not an understatement to say that I owe everything as an actor to 'Merlin.' It was pretty much my first job, and I didn't know what I was doing for many years on it. It wasn't until the third and fourth series - the fourth series especially - that I really found my feet with the character, and as an actress.

I never went to school for acting; it just comes to me. I never practice. I read the script, I'll memorize it. I don't even practice the acting. I'll just do it the day, and it will just come to me.

I try not to do scenes a certain way, because then I become conscious of it, and it dosen't come off as realistic. I try to make it so that I'm not really aware of what I'm doing.

I'm 64 years old, and I've been acting now for 42 years. Only recently have I thought to myself, 'Hmmm, it may be interesting to start directing.'

I am very much a seat-of-the-pants actor. I will prepare when I have to. But I like being unprepared.

I always love watching those natural actors like Bill Cosby, Raven-Symone and Shia LaBeouf - just effortless actors.

Everybody works in a different way, and I've worked with actors that have no training whatsoever who are phenomenal.

In every character I play, I try to imbibe something. Every film is a learning process for me.

I knew absolutely nothing about acting, and had to be taught everything. Some people are born naturals and know how to walk, talk and hold themselves. I didn't and had to learn everything.

It was not my dream to be an artist. How could it have been? I thought, artist, much like a leader, was something you either were or weren't. Never something you set out to be.

'Friday Night Lights' was kind of like my college years because I did four seasons of that. It was my first series. It was the most time I had with one character, and kind of growing and evolving with the character over that long of a span of time, it just allows you to sort of learn in a completely different way that I had never experienced.

When I first started out, I was a bad actor.

I think good actors are born with a kind of native gift. When you study too much with an acting teacher, that gets taken away. You lose your sense of spontaneity.

You don't realize it till you get older as an actor, but all the parts you've gotten have led you up to today - good, bad, and otherwise.

'Curb' is 100 percent improvised, which is wild. I'd never done anything like that.

I'm a spontaneous actress, not a studied one.

I think I was always this person. If you see my early work, my first TV show called 'Shikast' and a lot of 'Sea Hawks.' I think I was dealing with a misplaced definition of success.

Maybe I was just born with a little bit of vocals or natural talent, but I feel like I taught myself.

I'm just an instinctive actress, I've never had a lesson in my life.