William Fichtner Quotes

Obviously, modeling and acting are very different. With acting, there's just so much more to explore on an intellectual, emotional, and physical level, especially with 'Ma.'

As an actor, you try to bring as much of yourself to a part to try and create a feeling of authenticity and emotional truth and resonance.

I have just gained a deeper and deeper respect for acting and the whole art of it because you're really trying to live a life and to do the best justification for it.

If you really do want to be an actor who can satisfy himself and his audience, you need to be vulnerable. You must reach the emotional and intellectual level of ability where you can go out stark naked, emotionally, in front of an audience.

What's interesting about the process of acting is how often you don't know what you're doing.

I'm an emotional actor. When I'm doing a scene, I really believe it. I live the part as long as I'm in the scene.

As an actor, to go and see those shows - great plays like 'Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?' and Clifford Odets's 'Golden Boy' - it's so exhilarating. I'd personally love to perform the role of Jerry in Edward Albee's 'The Zoo Story.' He's a transient, lost soul, and an example of humanity at its rawest.

Like any other actor, I draw on life experience.

Performing, for me, has always been a very inner process.

Obviously an actor draws on his own experience.

Obviously there are times with acting when exactly what is required is just going through the motions, and when doing nothing is the best thing. But at other times, you have to make that leap beyond the immediate environment of people putting up lights on the set.

Actors are hard to photograph because they never want to reveal who they are. You don't know if you're getting a character from a Chekhov play or a Polanski film. It depends what mood they're in.

Insecurity, commonly regarded as a weakness in normal people, is the basic tool of the actor's trade.

There are a lot of things that make up a performance, a lot of technical things. It isn't always just about pulling it up from the darkest recesses of your mind or your heart. It's your experience and your observation.

I guess every actor has certain emotions they can access easier than others.

I feel that one of the hardest things in acting is the way you need to switch your emotions.

At the end of the day, you're handing your performance over. If a director says after a take, 'You know what, try it just really angry. Just get furious'... you're like, 'Well, I don't know if I want to give you that because I don't know if I trust what you're going to do with it.'

The rehearsal time is almost my favourite part of being an actress, particularly if you're working on a play that hasn't been done before.

As an actor, you work to the script: that's our main priority. But you have to be aware and look around for things that help you bring that little bit extra, that touch of realism that rams the point home.

I think the best dramatic actors know how to tap into their character's humor.

It's funny because, if you're not an actor, people always tend to say, 'How do you memorize all those lines? Is that really hard?' I'm always like, 'That's just a small part of it. I have to seek my craft and my emotions' - you know, all this gross, actor-y stuff.

One of the reasons why good actors are good is that they have poor impulse control. If you put them in front of a camera, they respond as if it was actually happening, in real time, rather than doing it after several takes.

As an actor, you tend to draw on your human instincts and your background, what you've gone through as an individual.

I'm not going to do the story any service if my acting isn't strong.

Acting is different from mental gymnastics. You try to discover as much about the character as you can, but a large area is mysterious.