Olivia Williams Quotes

I have had the auditioning process go on for two weeks or three weeks. I am always incredibly anxious. The audition and the wait is definitely the hardest part for me.

Auditions are not a natural environment, and you feel judged, even though everyone is just excited to find the right person.

Notes are tricky in an audition, because I find, more often than not, my instinct is right.

I trained myself, whenever I walk into auditions, to hate everyone in the room.

Musical auditions are always the worst because you have to sing and act, and that's so stressful.

There are more things to worry about in the world than a messed-up audition. It's out of your hands. So often, it's not down to acting abilities but something an actor has no control over. So go in, be prepared, do your job, and go and enjoy the rest of your day.

I remember my very first audition for a film. I was in Seattle. They were taping the session, and I just went crazy. The director finally said, 'Zoe, what are you doing? The camera's right here. Just talk to me.' And it took that director saying that to me to change everything.

The best thing I ever learned when I first started acting is that you audition, and then you forget about it when you walk out the door. Even when you have a callback, you can't bank on things until you actually book that job, or your heart will just be broken over and over again.

I would hate to be thrust into the middle of a big film and not deliver. There's young actors and they're put into these central roles and they're commanding armies - but they can't quite pull it off. I'd much rather do it in small steps and build it from there.

In films, I didn't crave the type of attention I had sort of stumbled into in my music career. And I do not audition well. I'm really not good at it. Early on, I did movies like 'Alpha Dog' and 'Black Snake Moan' because the directors didn't ask me to audition.

For me, the audition is always the hardest part of the whole process. Once you get on set, once you're in costume, you're with the director, it's so much easier to get in the headspace.

The stressful thing about being an actor is, like, you have to kind of audition again and again and again, you know? You go in one time, and you go in again for a director and then again for producers and then again and again and again.

When you react to things, that's when you get into trouble and it's tough to completely control a split-second reaction.

I always like auditioning because it's like, 'Oh, my God, I have an audition - yay!' It means opportunity for work, which is great. But it's scary as well, because you put so much pressure on yourself.

You are always looking for a different kind of read and a different kind of intention when you are by yourself in the booth. Occasionally you are playing off of people, but it is a bit of a different muscle that you have to flex. At the end of the day though, it really is all just great fun and play that we are lucky enough to get paid for.

I also think the more experienced you get as an actor, you start to hear the conversations about why people get cast and not cast, sometimes it's so arbitrary. They decided the moment you walked in the door. And there's nothing you could have done to sway them, even if you'd the greatest performance of all time.

Comedy is actually very hard. It's hard to choose those moments and know when you can really push it, and know when you should be bringing it back and making it more subtle, and knowing as time goes on, as you do take after take and the crowd around you stops laughing. Whenever you do comedy, you realize you're up against - you're performing next to people who you would think are so unbelievably good at it, that that's a bit of a pressure. But at the same time, it's just fun. It's fun to be able to let out that side of you.

I think a lot of people are afraid of freedom. They want their lives to be controlled, to be put into a box... Why should someone put a limit on how much fun I can have, how much I can accomplish?

It's always nerve-wracking; it's like going to a new school every time you start a new movie. There are so many people and you're trying to be comfortable and vulnerable on set in order to be fearless on camera. But it's fun, it's part of the job. You've just got to be very personable, I guess.

You don't know what you're doing. You're just hoping that people won't make fun of you. I had no idea how it would turn out.

The fact that the movie's called Norman and I play Norman was just a weighted responsibility that I never experienced before. I just tried to be prepared as possible. I think that's really the only way to go about it, from what I heard from people who have to do this a lot.

Actors tend to get in their own way, a lot. A lot of times you will do things that will screw up your audition process. I was very bad at auditioning, and I always went in to it saying ‘God I hope I don’t screw this up.’ But at the same time, the directors are saying, ‘God, I hope this person is the savior.’ You have to remember is that the worst thing that could happen is you don’t get the job you don’t already have.

We've all felt anger. It can come when things don't turn out the way we want. It might be a reaction to something which is said of us or to us. We may experience it when people don't behave the way we want them to behave. Perhaps it comes when we have to wait for something longer than we expected. We might feel angry when others can't see things from our perspective. There seem to be countless possible reasons for anger….If we desire to have a proper spirit with us at all times, we must choose to refrain from becoming angry.

The modern world seems to make fun of people in a lot of ways.

I've never been able to read for anything, and every time I have, I've never gotten the part. And I don't know why that is. I just can't. Reading or auditioning for something... It's like it's this mental block in my brain, and I just can't do it. But when people ask you to do stuff without making you go through that, it's a much more pleasant experience.