Dick York Quotes

The dream would be to work with my two favorite actors, Daniel Day Lewis and Cate Blanchett. Or playing Joaquin Phoenix's brother in a film. Basically anything where I get to act opposite actors like these; ones who bring a certain caliber to their work and literally morph into the character they are playing.

I find that a lot of the good acting comes out when you're physically being pushed: your brain turns off and just deals with the situation at hand. You get to a point where you're exhausted at the end of the day, but I quite like that.

In the theater you rehearse in order to do the performance. And in the movies the rehearsal and the performance are kind of the same thing. You're figuring it out and hopefully the camera is pointed at you when you're doing it.

It's not good just to have life experience of film-making and that's all. It's hard to play a real person when you've been in jets and town cars for three years.

Now people want what the movie was about, which is violent comedy. And that's really what The Aristocrats is based on - what will a family do out of desperation.

Did Anthony Hopkins really have to be a serial killer to be in 'Silence of the Lambs?,' I don't think so, no. It's called acting, people.

When you drop your guard in films, the acting process compensates. You get lazy and you start acting.

Preparation is definitely important, but it depends on the kinds of roles I do. Like, I completely identify with my character in 'Yeh Jawaani Hai Deewani.' I had to be myself and I didn't have to actually prepare for it.

When I do film, I really take on roles and I take on characters.

I think that 'Hangover II' is as funny as 'The Hangover I,' honest to God, but I think that it's a little bit darker, and the stakes are a little bit higher.

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.

I know I can't play funny roles in movies. I tried, and it didn't work.

They did cast me as an ingenue once, and the novelty was nice. But I said, 'There is nothing here to play!' I really like getting into the meat of a role.

If everyone's ready for a shot to start, except for one actor who's intent on getting to the bottom of their soul, it can be a bit annoying.

On the stage you develop a character that's different from yourself. In a film they're always saying, 'Walk over here. Say this line. Be you.'

There's no one more willing to do something than an actor when it comes to perfecting a scene.

One time I nearly experienced failure was when I was acting in 'Hum Aapke Hain Kaun' in 1994. One day, I woke up and found that part of my face was paralysed.

I love romantic comedies. They're for me the easiest thing to do and the most natural to do. There's nothing natural about holding an uzi hanging out of a moving van shooting at people. That's not second nature to me, thank God.

You have to be talentedly insecure in order to be a good actress. And then it's the director's job to make you more miserable and get a good take.

With Portlandia, I don't think our intention is always to find something funny. Sometimes the humor comes from taking something really seriously. We're okay with making somebody feel uncomfortable or uneasy.

More eccentric characters can push pretty far, but if you stay on the side of reality, it's always funnier.

Since I was from the theater, that's how I learned how to go through the process of being a character. That's how I learned, and that's what I was comfortable doing. And then, the first feature films, I'm sure I was no fun because I did not want to be spontaneous in that filmic way that really can work for you.

If you stretch tragedy, it will always become comedy.

You have to find it in the moment, and that's one of the challenges of being an actor - especially a film actor - is that you have to maintain these heightened emotions for long periods of time. There's no trick to it. You just have to do.

I'm a Method actor. I spent years training for the drinking and carousing I had to do in this film.