Norbert Leo Butz Quotes

It is hard to be an actor on a TV show, because you don't know what's coming and you sort of find out very last minute sort of what's happening.

I think sometimes I'm more fond of doing the research for the character because you learn so much. Sometimes shooting is really difficult because you wake up early and you're always hurrying. And sometimes I don't know what I'm doing. I'm here and there.

I should be one of those actors who has a list. A lot of people do - 'I wanna do this and this and this' - but I don't. I enjoy being surprised - indeed, often ambushed - by a role.

I prefer to surprise myself as I'm writing. I'm not interested in it if I already know where it's going. So I have only the most general sense of what I'm doing when I start a story. I sometimes have a destination in mind, but how the story is going to go from Point A to Point Z is something I make up as I go along.

Being on 'The Following' is constantly flying by the seat of my pants. The story can change and the character can change at a moment's notice.

I just arrive, they hand me a script and say, do it.

When I rehearse, it ends up doing more harm than good. I think I work a little bit better when it's right off the bat. Mostly, I try to wrap my head around a role as much as I can without rehearsing and then kind of make it as fresh as possible on the day.

The exciting part of acting, I don't know how else to explain it, are those moments when you surprise yourself.

The great thing about being an actor is things happen to you very quickly. I like to put myself in the way of surprise.

Sometimes the character will go into a completely different direction than I expected once the cameras start rolling. That's what I love about what I do.

It felt scary because there was no auditioning, no rehearsing.

Sometimes they keep us in the dark, but it's TV, so sometimes they keep us in the dark because even they don't know yet. You know what I mean? So, it sort of develops as it goes along and according to various needs that arise.

I kind of went into soap opera with 'General Hospital' in the '80s. It's like theater because every day it's a new script, which really doesn't have a beginning, middle or end like a play or a movie script. So you have to be on your toes and bring it every day. And you have to be spontaneous, which is really how I like to work.

There's nothing obvious or predictable in acting. That's what it means to be in this profession.

Celebrity Apprentice' was something where you don't know what you're going to do the next day. Every two days, somebody goes home, and you don't know if the next day you've got to be the project manager or what's going to happen, so you can't really prepare. You really have to be on top of everything.

It's always a pleasant experience while acting because I like to surprise myself and the audience with what I do.

You're better off not preparing, because what you prepare will always be wrong.

Some of the best auditions I've ever had have been when my agent called and said, "They want you 20 minutes ago, in an office in Century City, to see you for something." It's actually sometimes a really good thing. I don't have time to second-guess myself, I don't have time to overthink things, and I don't have time to get bogged down in stuff. I'm not sitting there thinking for a week and a half, before I'm supposed to go in front of a network president to do something. That just gives you time to be nervous.

There are some actors who are rehearsal actors, and some who are not. I am not. Having said that, I don't know what I am talking about.

My strength lies in prepping. I'm not someone who can just walk onto the set and perform.

When I call 'Action,' I love to be surprised. And the actors I've been fortunate enough to work with always surprise me in the best ways.

All that acting and all that stuff and emoting and crap will come after you know what you're doing. So when you get - when I get on stage, I don't have to think about it.

I think it's a falsehood to think you can have some kind of plan. Acting isn't like that, it's more vocational, I think.

You have to be simultaneously well-prepared and spontaneous. You don't really know for sure what percentage of the preparation you are going to use, and you don't know exactly where it will apply. So you have to be prepared, but not locked into that preparation.

Improvisation is a weird word because we often think it means that you make things up out of whole cloth right there on the spot, and that's rarely the case in acting. You have to know who the character is, what the situation is and what is needed.