Billy West Quotes

I used to do theater in L.A., but it got to the point where everything was really showcase-y.

If you're playing a fictional character, you can create a character, you can sort of take certain liberties. And when you're playing a real person who's actually standing there watching you, you know, it's - you do feel a weight. You know, you feel an obligation to not only be - to give the best performance that you can, but to make sure that you represent this person.

I think most actors jump at the chance to do something where the camera's on them all the time.

I think the hardest thing about being an actor is between jobs when you don't know and wondering if you'll ever work again. It's kind of a crazy business.

I grew up very comfortable in this bizarre, circus-like existence, but, as comfortable as I was, I was also aware of the struggles that actors go through.

If you take every challenge everyone has in their life and multiply it in severity you get what it's like in the life of an actor.

All I ever cared about was actors - toughest job in this business.

I've always said that you can't be the new Mel Blanc by doing Mel Blanc's voice.

Drama is where I always thought I would go.

Playing a real-life character is definitely a lot more responsibility than one that is fictionalized.

It's very hard to become an actor in film and television, you have to have such perseverance and you have to really believe that if you have any sort of talent at all, you will find work one day.

I think I have a pretty good ear. I mean, even just starting with, like, Austin Powers, where I did young Robert Wagner. People were, like, "How do you imitate Robert Wagner? What does he sound like? What does that even involve?".

I never base characters on real people - you can get into so much trouble that way!

I believe in storytelling, not story-selling. I want people to believe the characters are real. So I'm a realist.

Are my characters copies of people in real life? ... Don't ever believe the stories about authors putting people into novels. That idea is a kind of joke on both authors and readers. All the readers believe that authors do it. All the authors know that it can't be done.

The Muppets are no joke. They are for real. Each one has an agent and manager and all that stuff. I'm not even kidding.

Every actor, I don't care what they say, their roles are a lot more interesting than we are, and at the end of the day, it's still entertainment or fantasy. I think we can learn a lot from the characters we play and I find that the characters are even more noble than myself.

When we start shooting I don't have rehearsals with characters at all. So, rather than pulling them towards myself, I travel closer to them; it's very much closer to the real person than anything I try to create. So I give them something but I also take from them.

It's one thing to be sitting at a drawing board, alone in your home and coming up with a fantasy character, and drawing her whichever way you feel like drawing, then dealing with a real performer. All of a sudden, things change. It's amazing, in working with actors, how much I learn from them and how many new lines will come to mind because of their personality or their strengths.

Even those who, like me, believe that Roe v. Wade and the decisions elaborating on reproductive rights were constitutionally correct must recognize that, for many on the right, the sudden and relatively sloppily reasoned character of the abortion rulings... did real damage to the Court's reputation as a relatively neutral arbiter of legal disputes.

In a funny way, acting, to me, is all make-believe, even if the film has unicorns in it or is a normal movie that can be set in real-life time. I'm still imagining that I'm a different character, so it's all, in a funny way, like fantasy.

I've found that Hollywood's a really honest business. They don't pull any punches. They tell you exactly what you want-I want the fake breasts and the flat car and the big pool. You know, they're real up-front about it.

I got good at trying to throw a voice on a character from the very beginning as opposed to like reading it and sitting with it and mulling over it and stuff like that just try to read what it is and then try to put a funny voice to it like as soon as possible and stuff like that. Once you get laughs with your voice then you can start thinking about, you know the physical characteristics and how they might walk or if they stick out their buck teeth or if they wear an afro and stuff like that. I think like finding the voice of the character helps to like build the wardrobe and everything else.

By TV standards - I'm not comparing it to manual labor by any means - by TV comedy standards, it is the hardest job I will ever, ever have. There is nothing that could be harder. I mean, when you combine the amount of writing that has to be done - sharp writing - with the fact that you then take it to the street and improvise with both celebrities who have no idea what's going to happen and real people who are not actors or comedians who don't even know I'm about to talk to them... It's lightning in a bottle every time.

I love when I get to play these characters that are bigger than life. There are roles in animation that I never get to do in real life - and it appeals to my ego as an actor to play the Queen of Everything. I admit it.