David Morrissey Quotes

From the moment you say 'action,' this is the fun part - things should happen that surprise you, excite you, scare you, turn you on, make you laugh. If things aren't surprising you, when you say 'cut,' whisper things to the actors that will make them do things that do surprise you.

I start with a character and a situation, but I don't know what's going to happen until I write it. Sometimes things happen that surprise me.

The great fun of doing new plays is that people have no idea what's going to happen next. That goes quite soon, as people start talking about it, and the only way you can keep hold of that is genuinely to keep changing it.

That's the great thing about filmmaking: Things happen you don't know are going to happen at the end.

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.

There's a tremendous amount to be gained from being a performer, and being an artist, and being an actor.

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.

Thankfully, I have a background as an actor, and you learn how to live in that world of not knowing what's going to happen next.

The great thing about acting is that you get to be a lot of different things in one lifetime. You get to explore different personalities and characters.

I like acting. I really like acting. The career, it can keep you interested. With 'Entourage,' the characters are living a lifestyle that is kind of troubling. But the challenge is to make Shauna a person.

I am the kind of actor who will do just about anything.

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.

Theater is about surprises and things that you haven't seen before on stage.

Everything that I am going to do as an actress doesn't matter where it's coming from. It just has to be interesting.

I'm one of those wrestlers that leaves everything to the audience and to the fans. I never plan anything, and you will never see Alberto Patron planning in the back what he is going to do in the match.

Actors love to do extreme things, so that is why they become actors; otherwise, they'd be novelists.

I have tried different things as an actor and have always believed in experimenting.

It's all you want as an actor: to have a story people want to be told.

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

I had a really great experience so far with film acting. And most experiences from most actors, I've heard, are not like this. But I want a career that has many disciplines and many options.

In theater, there's a lot of work to do to build the characters. It's a great experience.

I've always believed acting is an improvisational art form, even when not a single line is changed. I mean, the behavior should always be improvised. My favorite moments in any performance are when I'm just along for the ride; when I'm surprising myself. I know when I'm done and I think to myself, 'Gee, I didn't see that coming,' I've done well.

Nobody should expect an actor to have these wonderful ideas and concepts about the world: they pretend to be other people for a living.

One of the skills you have to master in theater is the ability to make the audience believe that things that aren't there are there - just like when you're acting against CGI. Also, in a theater, the people in the back row can't see the whites of your eyes. Or your lips moving as you deliver dialogue.

The apparatus has to serve our improbability and improvisation. Being good and playing the songs is not enough.