Billy West Quotes

Being an actor is a lot more involved than many people realize; there are hundreds of ways to play any character. Even for a stylized bad guy, there are 4 or 5 different personalities I can play off the top of my head without thinking - better and more experienced actors can do dozens or hundreds.

The great amount of fun that I have is I can cast dramatic actors to play comedic roles, and I can cast comedic actors to play dramatic roles because, really, there's no such thing. There's just actors.

I have a theory... Theatre actors are better at auditions than film actors.

The ability to stretch my range into all genres and characters is something I take great pleasure in doing. I thoroughly enjoy it. I consider myself a character actor, though some think of me as a leading man. As an actor, I love shifting gears from character to character, and the more range I can expand, the better.

Look, every actor has a different way of preparing or creating a character and yeah, we all are from different backgrounds.

I love to play different roles. That's just the kind of actor I am.

I was excited to play Lil' Kim and I wanted to do the role justice. I worked really hard on that role, whether it was performing the rhymes, studying the dialect, her swagger and her stage performances. I wanted people to see my range and stretch my wings as an actress.

Disney acting is a little more difficult than many people think it is. People feel like the characters aren't deep, but as an actor, you try to do everything you can do the best of your ability.

When I go from a role with heavy prosthetic makeup, which I've done quite a bit of as well, and then do a role where I'm not wearing any, I have to be conscious of toning everything down. Because when you're wearing prosthetic makeup, of course, you have to really move your face a lot more to convey things through the makeup.

I will watch everything that Cary Grant did, or Kubrick made or Bergman.

I've always admired Gene Hackman, Jack Lemmon, Jimmy Stewart, Gregory Peck. I'm showing my age here.

Actors aren't all the same. They have very different skills. There are actors of intellect who are very thoughtful about everything they do... and then there are actors of instinct who don't know what they're doing until the cameras roll... My father was actually quite thoughtful about what he did, while my mother was much more instinctual.

Voices are like fingerprints, from Cagney to Bogart. They never lost it. My voice is instrumental in categorizing me.

One role blends into the next role. I mean, there's strange idiosyncrasies from roles that I play that I picked up that will never go away.

My forte is playing drunks down the ages. When my agent rings me about a role, I don't ask what the part is, but what century it's in.

When I made 'Terminator 3,' I learned something about directing actors to behave like robots. And one of the key things I learned is that if an actor tries to play a robot, he or she risks playing it mechanically in a way that makes the performance uninteresting.

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.'

You'll see Dame Judi Dench in a Bond film, in Shakespeare and then starring in her own sitcom. You never see that here with Meryl Streep.

I'm not Jack Nicholson. I'm not Brando. But I do mumble.

Take characters that Nicholson or De Niro play: they're not always tough.

Even as a kid, I was more enchanted watching Bette Davis than Errol Flynn.

I have played 50 different kinds of fathers and villains. Only mediocre actors play the part the same way.

I am the kind of actor who will do just about anything.

That's the beauty of the acting world. You can play so many different characters who know and do so many things that you have no idea about as yourself. So I'm a big fan of workshops and classes and learning new things because you can always apply it. It's your little supply bag of creativity. Keep filling it up.

'Whatever it takes' is my opinion of method acting and, indeed, any other kind of acting. Look at Brando and De Niro. But it's not my cup of tea.