Barbra Streisand Quotes

There's a tremendous amount to be gained from being a performer, and being an artist, and being an actor.

With acting, I always feel conscious of what I'm doing.

When a performance isn't working, it's usually because the actor is trying to do something and they're not able to express their idea very well. It's a muddled expression.

If you really do want to be an actor who can satisfy himself and his audience, you need to be vulnerable. You must reach the emotional and intellectual level of ability where you can go out stark naked, emotionally, in front of an audience.

A stage actor has to be 10% aware of the audience as he's performing.

On the whole, actors shout when they don't know what they're doing, trying to make an impact.

In film, you're always using your tools, your body, your voice, your emotions, but onstage, you use them in a different way.

Acting is experience with something sweet behind it.

There are a lot of things that make up a performance, a lot of technical things. It isn't always just about pulling it up from the darkest recesses of your mind or your heart. It's your experience and your observation.

The actor should not play a part. Like the Aeolian harps that used to be hung in the trees to be played only by the breeze, the actor should be an instrument played upon by the character he depicts.

What I learned is that acting is to a large extent about trying to stave off self-doubt long enough to be natural and real onstage.

I know what I love about acting - and it's the creative process.

One tries to be an observer as an actor and indeed as a director because the small things, the give-away things are what are really interesting to a performer.

Honestly, I'm a shallow performer. I just go with the text and feel my way around it. There's not a whole lot of shaping.

I had always heard that theatre is for 'serious' actors but after actually having rehearsed day in and day out, I realize how challenging it is.

As an actor, I draw from myself.

I transitioned into theater and acting when I was about 9, community theater and musicals, being, like, chorus-kid-number-78 or whatever. But I just loved it. As a kid you just crave attention, and early on I just felt it was so cool and fun to play around and have people clap for me. But eventually I grew up and fell deeper into it.

I have learned that acting is not about beauty.

I want to break into the acting industry. It's something I have a great deal of respect for; it's a passion of mine. It's so amazing, the differences between acting and being an athlete, but the one commonality is they both evoke emotion in the viewer. And those emotions are real. So I think that's pretty cool.

As I told you, from the time I was fifteen, I thought the theater was too much involved with actors trying to make the audience love them, being over emotional.

Sometimes I think of movie acting as advanced pretend.

Acting is what happens on the way.

As actors, you do have to be aware of your audience. You can't act in a vacuum, even if that audience isn't exactly present with you.

I have just gained a deeper and deeper respect for acting and the whole art of it because you're really trying to live a life and to do the best justification for it.

I love theater work because of the immediate effect your performance has on the audience. And I love the repetition; I love getting on the same stage for more than a month and reciting the same lines, trying to make a small or large step towards an improvement in my acting.