Alison Wright Quotes

No actor who's any good can say truthfully to themselves, 'Yeah, I'm good; I've got this sorted.'

I did one or two plays at school. Once I played a tree, so I never thought I would be a good actor.

I've realized that I can do performances.

The first time I thought I should be an actor was in school. I thought, 'At least this is something for which I won't have to study.' But I've realised that an actor needs to be constantly unsure about what he's doing and about what's going on around him. The moment you think you've nailed it, you're dead.

When you find yourself on stage singing and you are embarrassed about what you are singing in front of your peers, then you have to think about your priorities.

I'm in the studio for hours in that tiny little box, and really, the performing part is what I'm most excited about.

Music is a very big part of my preparation as an actor.

Nothing makes an actor feel freer and more inventive and more creative than being trusted.

My act is always a work in progress. I pray I have a bad day before a show.

On stage, you have to have incredible confidence, or you would stop doing it. But I don't think I will ever get to the point where I go, 'I know exactly what I am doing,' and I don't think I want to.

I can't act without music very well.

Acting is great. You spend your whole life trying to get it right.

Can I be a leading man? I don't believe myself to be; I don't think that I am, but I'm in this place as a performer where I think about how to make things smaller, more subtle.

I would say runway is easier because your job is to look good or play a character that is just going somewhere. It's rather physical, whereas acting is terrifying because you're dealing with your subconscious, and those can be murky waters. But I definitely can say that I enjoy acting more as an artist.

I am quite an insecure person, and I think that, like any director, if I'm asked about my vision for a piece, I feel very vulnerable.

It's a little bit odd. The first time you do the play, you kind of throw yourself into it, trying to get the most out of all the individual moments. Then, a few hours later, you're still there, wondering what you could possibly do differently than what you just did a couple hours ago.

As a director, you have a thousand things going on in your head, and of course, that's going to be difficult. That's going to mean that some things get overlooked. And so, for us as performers, being the selfish pricks that we are, we're sitting there being concerned about ourselves all the time and our character's through-line.

I've never been one to want to be the center of attention and be put up on stages every night. That's just not really my personality. I'm comfortable with it now, but my real passion is being creative.

To conceive music, to execute it in front of others, to make it so others can do it...it can be pretty humbling, and kind of scary. So yeah, I don't really feel in competition with anybody. Not because I feel elitist, but because I have enough self-competition. I'm always struggling.

In rehearsals I get so completely wrapped up with the reality that's occurring on stage that by the time the play has opened I'm not usually quite as aware of the distinctions between what I'd intended and the result. There are many ways of getting the same result.

As an actress, I'm supposed to create something from head to toes, with clues, with lines, with shapes, and even with that power, I felt lost and not in control.

Waiting is part of writing. When I write the word 'waiting' by hand it even looks like 'writing.'

When I look back on the years of excessive self-doubt, I wonder how I was able to make my paintings. In part, I managed to paint because I had a desire, as strong as the desire for food and sex, to push through, to make an image that signified.

I don’t like to rehearse. And I couldn’t understand how you could go through eight weeks of rehearsal, without exhausting every possibility. To the point where, you know, you would just lie gasping on the floor!

I'm scared of rehearsals, I'm scared of doing all this because I don't feel like I'm an actress.