Sarah Bernhardt Quotes

The stage is the opposite: you are talking loud so you can project to the back row and you know the whole play. In a movie, you are scene-to-scene; you only know the purpose of that scene. On the stage, that is artistic science. It is real, it is loving, it is truthfully you. It is two different formulas to make two different art pieces, but it is all about truth.

There is a drama queen in me, as I love acting, and I used to stand in front of the mirror and act since my childhood.

Acting is the least mysterious of all crafts. Whenever we want something from somebody or when we want to hide something or pretend, we're acting. Most people do it all day long.

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 will do plays as long as they're interested in having me do them. It's the biggest opportunity to learn the most about how to act. Something I discover every time I'm doing one is how little I know about acting - how important the art of listening is, and how important it is to listen with your entire body. You can tell so much of a story with stillness, and a lot of that can be from really actively listening to your scene partner.

What dancing has helped me with is blocking; it makes me comfortable with my body. You know how to hit your mark, you know how to embody a swagger. But sitting down and looking across the table at another actor and being able to go to battle on screen is nothing to do with singing or dancing.

Playing a drunk doesn't mean being a drunk, only bad actors try to be drunk. A real drunk tries to be sober, he wants another drink. How a character hides their feelings tells us who they are, no one shows their feelings except bad actors.

I know people think that acting is not quite the occupation of grown-ups, but it is actually the ultimate learning process: You get a multitude of experiences, all for the price of one life.

Everything that you do is a challenge. And acting is just building up your concentration and being able to listen and to do the ridiculous.

I went to the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, which was in Carnegie Hall, which itself was exciting - just to walk into it.

Most of our occupations are low comedy.... We must play our part duly, but as the part of a borrowed character. Of the mask and appearance we must not make a real essence, nor of what is foreign what is our very own.

I've never thought of myself as an actor, so somebody recognizing me for that would be a real shock.

Indian actors know how to shout with the eyes.

I come down as an actor and my marks are already laid out on the floor - somebody else organized what I'm going to do. I think, why am I here? And why I'm here is to express the words with some sort of vague emotion and make them seem real. I wanted to go back to how it was before.

When I saw my first movie, I was fine, but I thought, "Oh, my heavens. It's not about just standing there on my mark and saying these lines. I need to actually act."

I feel like my home is stage acting.

The same thing I applied to football, I applied to trying to be an actor and hopefully it came off well.

We do on stage things that are supposed to happen off. Which is a kind of integrity, if you look on every exit as being an entrance somewhere else.

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.

With acting, there are a lot of subtleties and non-verbals involved. If someone is over there, getting eaten by a shark, there's a non-verbal way of how to act that. There's a certain nuance to acting that does not come intuitively to me. It's something I still have to learn.

I play a lot of characters where I don't even speak in my own voice. I learned about focus and I learned to trust that things can work when they're not heightened and that it's interesting when things are pared down.

You need to be a good screen partner. It's very meaningful to me to be a part of great acting performances.

Acting is not just something I love but a part of who I am.

As Michael (Chekhov)'s pupil, I learned more about acting. I learned psychology, history, and the good manners of art - taste.

The first job I ever did in the theatre, I was supposed to be a genius piano player. I couldn't play the piano, but you just sit there at a piano like you're playing, and suddenly all this amazing music comes out and the audience believes you can do it. It's the same with computers. I love scenes where there are people yanking at monitors, "yes I'll put you through now," and you know they're just doing that. But you can look brilliant at all this technology. I love it.