Olivia Thirlby Quotes

When I was younger, people used to say you only really prove yourself as an actor on stage. And I disagree with that. Some of the finest acting I've ever come across has been for film.

When I say that the acting is sort of like a normal acting experience, I'm just talking about the interacting in actual scenes, like doing dialogue.

Movie acting is about covering the machinery. Stage acting is about exposing the machinery. In cinema, you should think the actor is playing himself, if he's that good. It looks very easy. It should. But it's not, I assure you.

My first film, 'Like Minds,' was with Toni Colette, who was extraordinary. I mean it was basically a mini-masterclass for acting on film at a time when all you could probably see were my eyebrows bouncing up and down on screen.

When you're performing, you're playing to the back row. With acting, you have to be more nuanced.

The difference - the fundamental difference between theater acting and film acting is that film acting is disjunctive.

Stage acting lets you feel the character a little better, but in the movies, you have to keep regenerating your energy level when shooting scenes over and over again.

Ultimately, cinema is an actor's medium.

As an actor, I think most people have a tendency to want to demonstrate that they can act, they can emote.

I don't see any difference in the craft of acting, in film or television. It's absolutely the same. It's different storytelling, playing a character over multiple hours, as opposed to two.

I think for acting on stage and in film, one informs the other. Obviously, they require really different kinds of discipline and really different kinds of work. It's more along the same continuum, for me.

I have to say, doing theater, that's what you're trained to do. Doing film, when I first started doing it, felt like something else entirely. It felt like the difference between, I don't know, waiting tables and painting a great work of art. It's night and day. I didn't feel like it was even acting.

Working on camera is a different ballgame in the sense that it's far more intimate work, but the basics and the foundations of being able to create something that isn't necessarily your own instincts - is a character that you have inside your head - whether you're talking about television or film or theater, that still has to be the grounding work.

At eight o'clock the curtain goes up and that's it, you're out there with yourself, the audience, the other players. There's no "take two" business. You're on. The great thing is the rehearsals, too. When you're bouncing around on film sets and TV sets you don't really get the opportunity to - generally speaking - rehearse much. With theater you're kind of four-to-five weeks locked down in the room with the guys figuring stuff out. It's back to play school.

I do some acting. And there's a difference between "I do some acting" and "I'm an actor."

In that way, as an actor in particular, you're powerless. And so in that way as an actor in particular you can't make mistakes.

Certainly what constitutes a stage actor, what constitutes a film actor, I don't even know what that is. And both things are very accurate, in a sense. In terms of people's needs to concentrate on race, I wonder if it's completely necessary, but it's not something that is so dynamically relevant to me that I feel it should be one thing or another.

It’s more than just saying lines and turning the light on. You have to drive the story - there’s a technical aspect.

Things in the ring are definitely bigger, so that you can see them. But the movie world is completely different, and you have to hone things down because when that camera is so tight on you and so intimate and right up in your face, it's going to catch every little thing that you give it, and it's very easy to overdo it.

Theater acting is an operation with a scalpel, movie acting is an operation with a laser

Laurence [Fishburne] is a great example of how to communicate to the audience as you're acting with another actor.

As far as being an actor is concerned, you have to have passion. If you're not bringing the passion of the character into the room with you, you might as well not come into the room at all.

I have some friends who are actors. I've watched them work. And I would say that of all the arts, acting is the most grueling, thankless. Never apologize for your work.

A film is the director's medium. The theater is an actor's.

As an actor in the theater you're taught that you never play a bad guy. You have to love who you are. You can't say, "Oh, I'm a bad guy." How do you play that?