James Lipton Quotes

The foundation for film acting is stage acting.

On the stage you develop a character that's different from yourself. In a film they're always saying, 'Walk over here. Say this line. Be you.'

In film, you're always using your tools, your body, your voice, your emotions, but onstage, you use them in a different way.

'Whatever it takes' is my opinion of method acting and, indeed, any other kind of acting. Look at Brando and De Niro. But it's not my cup of tea.

It is the same actor in theatre and cinema, just the technique of acting changes.

I've had plenty of lessons about film acting and theatre acting.

Theater to me is acting but it's more real on film.

I really learned how to act on camera through 'Power Rangers' because I hadn't done a lot of film and TV.

Juilliard definitely emphasizes the theater. They don't train - at all really - for film acting. It's mostly process-oriented, pretty much for the stage.

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.

And at NYU, I went to the Atlantic Theater Company, and they have two main points. One of them is to always be active in something instead of just feeling it. And the other is figuring out your character.

I've learnt that there's acting for film, acting for theatre, and acting for an audition.

There's no such thing as The Method. The term 'method-acting' is so much nonsense. There are many methods, many techniques.

The world of the stage and the performance on the stage usually does not tend to translate very well - it doesn't tend to hold very well - once cameras are on it; it's not like it's terrible or embarrassing or bad anything, but, I, as an actor, would perform a role differently for an audience than I would for just cameras.

I have been taking classes and I'm familiar with stage, but I'm not as familiar with acting on camera.

I didn't really understand what you did when you went in front of the camera. And then suddenly I just understood it. When you're in a play, you carry the story, but you don't have to do that in film.

I used to ask Sean questions about acting. He's a brilliant actor, but I could never digest his information. I work primarily on an intuitive level.

At Julliard, they don't teach you where to move your face for the camera, you know?

Acting I never worried about, but it's so strange that on-camera work is so much more technical than theatre work, which I would have never thought in a million years.

When you're on stage, you're playing to whoever is in the back of the room, and TV and film is so much more detailed and nuanced, but I think that's what I always wanted to do. As much as I love theater and musical theater and would love to do it again, I really love the subtleties of film and theater acting.

Film acting is one of the only industries where you're criticized for working hard. In any other industry, it's considered a quality and something to behold.

I think there are certain technical things about acting that change between working in film and television. Everything definitely slows down and we have more time in film.

Film acting is really the trick of doing moments. You rarely do a take that lasts more than 20 seconds. You really earn your spurs acting onstage. I needed to do that for myself. I would hate to say at the end of everything that I never did a stage play.

I've done films where we don't rehearse, and I've done films where we heavily rehearse. I like rehearsals.

I went to NYU Tisch for undergrad, and it was amazing. My life then was extremely experimental with acting. I did crazy theater where we would be rolling around on the floor. I would be playing grandmothers, and clowns, and all this crazy stuff. Then I would be doing Shakespeare eight hours a day.