James Dean Quotes

Acting to me is real life - I don't act.

When you sit in a café, with a lot of music in the background and a lot of projects in your head, you're not really drinking your coffee or your tea. You're drinking your projects, you're drinking your worries. You are not real, and the coffee is not real either. Your coffee can only reveal itself to you as a reality when you go back to your self and produce your true presence, freeing yourself from the past, the future, and from your worries. When you are real, the tea also becomes real and the encounter between you and the tea is real. This is genuine tea drinking.

Acting is the absence of acting. It's believing in the truth of the moment you are creating.

Act out being alive, like a play. And after a while, a long while, it will be true.

If you can walk into a set and feel the reality of it, then immediately you're not having to work to bring yourself into the character.

I believe your thoughts are your thoughts, but are you a human being in front of the camera, or an actor? They are two different things.

Acting is all about finding the truth within whatever world you're in.

I don't believe in acting. I think that people in life act, but when you are on the stage or, in my case, also on screen, you have to be true.

Acting is the art of being and existing, and not being fake.

I just like to keep things small and subtle and authentic, and ground everything in reality. So that is something that I feel is my strength as a director and I try to achieve as an actor.

Acting means nothing unless it's truth. And honesty.

With acting, you have to just tell the truth in each moment.

I'm being myself when the camera is rolling.

When I do comedy, it's not like I'm trying to be funny for folks; I look for the honesty in it. With James Early in 'Dreamgirls,' it was the honesty of it: it was the reality of the moment. You know, I don't know what makes me play sometimes. I really don't. I just do what I do. And that's what I did for 'Sliders,' and that's how I got the job.

I am far from sure when I am acting and when I am not or, should I more frankly put it, when I am lying and when I am not. For what is acting but lying and what is good acting but convincing lying?

I found it liberating to sing on camera. On stage, you have to indicate having a thought, and the word you are singing must indicate it as well, but on camera, you can have ideas, you can take in all the stimuli that the character would be taking in, there's a freedom you get, and you don't have the obligation to transmit each idea to the back of the house. It felt so much closer to reality for me.

Acting is an everlasting search for truth.

what bothers me today is the lack of, well, i guess you'd call it authentic experience. so much is a sham. so much is artificial, synthetic, watered-down, and standardized...we're standardizing people, their goals, their ideas. the sham is everywhere.

I let the actors work out their ideas before shooting, then tell them what attitudes I want. If a scene isn't honest, it stands out like a sore thumb.

Acting is about being real, being honest.

How sweet it would be to treat men and things, for an hour, for just what they are!

In acting class, you talked always about keeping it real and don't act... connect with the people and connect with the partner that you're acting with. The same is also true in politics.

In everything, without doubt, truth has the advantage over imitation.

I don't believe that you can give the same performance every take. It's physically impossible, so why bother? If you don't do what is happening at that moment, then it's not real. Then you're holding something back.

Suit the action to the word : the word to the action : with this special observance that you o'erstep not the modesty of nature.