Matt Walsh Quotes

When I was doing 'All in the Family,' half the time, I was looking at where the cameras were, where were the other actors in the scene, what the audience was doing.

I've worked with actors who treat the first two takes like rehearsals. And that's okay. If the camera is on you and we're doing a scene where I'm off camera, I'm treating that as a rehearsal.

When we were doing 'Freaks and Geeks', I didn't quite understand how movies and TV worked, and I would improvise even if the camera wasn't on me. I thought I was helping the other actors by keeping them on their toes, but nobody appreciated it when I would trip them up. So I was improvising a little bit back then, but not in a productive way.

Comedians work great as actors because they're good under pressure. With a lot of actors, you have to make them feel like everything's going really well to get a good performance out of them. But, if you have a comedian on the set, you can tell them, 'Hey, you really are screwing this up,' and then they just get better.

What's interesting about the process of acting is how often you don't know what you're doing.

It's hard enough to just be a good actor. When you're on set, there's everything going against you. There are walkie talkies going off, the camera is creaking and moving, there are boom mics, and you have to hit your mark and make sure you don't shadow the other person's face. It's a really technical process.

Any actor working a long time should know how a shot is set up, where to place themselves, how to handle the lines. I'm a member of the crew, like the best boy, the electrician. What I'm good at is making eyes at the camera.

From an actor's point of view, if you are watching something, and you see improv, you know it. Because of your experience, you just bloody know that wasn't written.

You will find hardly any improvising on camera anywhere in my films. It's very structured, but it's all worked out from elaborate improvisations over a long period, as you know.

A wonderful but kind of a terrible truth about acting is that you actually get to a point where you become content with an impossible task: it is really impossible to properly prepare. You kind of have to start over every time.

Actors will, in their mind, want to 'steal the scene,' and the problem is that means the scene didn't work in the first place.

My mom usually does my self-tapes, and we've built a kind of shorthand with one another... Also, just having fun with it and not feeling restricted in your space and giving yourself enough space filming the shot to move around, things like that.

There is only so much you can do if you're pulling weight and there's nobody there to play off of. You can't have those beautiful moments with new actors who are so worried about everything else but the moment.

For me it's always about first impressions. I trust my instincts. I love to prepare if it's something that requires training. But I don't like to prepare the psychology too much. I enjoy the psychology of the character but I work better from a first impression.

I sort of consider myself a comedic actress, not a comedienne. I think it's different. You know, I'm not a stand-up or anything, but playing into comedic situations is sort of where, I think, my strength lies.

I usually don't say anything to the actors. It works better for me because when they come to the set, they are at the same time scared and excited because they are not well aware of what will happen.

I have had a lot of training as an actor, but it's very different than being on set.

With acting, you wanna see if you can get into trouble without knowing how you're gonna get out of it. It's like the exact opposite of war, where you need an exit strategy. When you're acting, you should get all the way into trouble with no exit strategy, and have the cameras rolling.

I've been acting since I could function. I got into acting to get attention as a child.

I've never had an audition like that before. They don't let you know about anything on 'Mad Men,' because it's a spoiler for everybody. I thought I was on the right track when I was cracking everybody up.

When I was younger, I was nervous and didn't have a huge amount of confidence as an actor. Comedy is something - you know when you're getting it right because you can hear. And you can hear if you're not getting it right! I like to create interesting, weird characters, and they're often best in comedies.

All good actors are unpredictable, and a little crazy in a good way, because they feel more secure playing other people than themselves.

When you're acting in a scene, you're focused on doing the scene. You can't break character and go, 'Oh my God, I love what you're doing!'

I tend not to have any references to anything. I just jump into the script in front of me. If you reference too much, you have no idea if the performances are right.

Why do you act? You act for an audience. In the theatre, you're in their presence. Film stars don't know what it is to have an audience.