Michael Emerson Quotes

In theater, you have a rehearsal period and you know just who to be.

You realize that as much as you want to socialize with the people on the set, or you want to, after a day shooting, joke around or whatever. Somehow, with playing Jesus, this doesn't happen. You actually need to decompress and be on your own and prepare on your own. It never happened to me before.

'Olive Kitteridge' is the only thing that I've done on camera where we had a day of rehearsal before we shot, and I'm so glad that that happened, because I was so nervous.

I'll read a script maybe twice, but I'll think about the role more than I'll rehearse lines.

With a theatre audience there's always the additional sense of a sustained challenge of which I'm acutely aware and for which you need to have the tools ready - your voice, physicality, brain.

I would say runway is easier because your job is to look good or play a character that is just going somewhere. It's rather physical, whereas acting is terrifying because you're dealing with your subconscious, and those can be murky waters. But I definitely can say that I enjoy acting more as an artist.

You have to run, an awful lot, on instinct. Even on 'Veep,' it's not like you get weeks of rehearsal to break out what's going on in the scenes.

For me, rehearsal is only about blocking and pacing; it's not about performance.

The script looks huge when you first get it, but you just have to go home and drill the lines out. The more you read it, the shorter it gets. I usually read it at least four times.

It takes a lifetime of devotion to build your craft, your confidence, and the ability to sing and dance and act believably.

Acting requires a great amount of empathy for real lived human experiences.

In my screen test for 'Hanna,' I sort of pretended I was this sporty person when I really wasn't.

Ultimately, as an actor, it comes down to committing to the text in the script.

Good looks may be enough for a heroine, but to become an artiste, you need at least a working knowledge of the language.

I talked to friends who are actors and who do Shakespeare loads, and they all said 'learn it so that your family wants to clobber you, they're so bored.' You can never relax, that's the problem, because when you do, a bit of Shakespeare comes up to bite your cheeky behind. It just does, if you're not really focused on it.

Theatre's a whole different beast to film. It requires a lot more of you.

I have always been a director's actress.

There's always certain actors that are interested in certain things and other actors who aren't.

In 'Bunny,' I have got my dialogues - almost 80 per cent of my shots were okayed in a single take. I did put in effort and did a lot of homework.

You'll get, like, 10 pages of sides the night before, and you have to go in and just wing it. For someone like me, I came from the theater, and I don't like putting anything up in front of anybody until it's really, really ready, so it can be very frustrating.

You never learn to act in front of a camera. You never learn anything in front of a camera. But you learn to act in a rehearsal room with a good play and a good cast and a good director.

As an actor, what I can do is tell the truth. At least, I hope I can tell the truth - a dramatic truth, but still an honest portrayal.

When I'm doing a role the one thing I ask is 'Is this believable? am I being truthful?'

George Hearn taught me that you learn that there are roles that are Tony roles and roles that are not.

There's the truth to every moment that you have to bring to every scene, but you have to understand the tonality of the film before you begin, which isn't something that's instinctual to me.