Oliver Goldsmith Quotes

Acting is all about big hair and funny props... All the great actors knew it. Olivier knew it, Brando knew it.

Actors die so loud.

As actors, we are expected to come up with an exaggerated performance, which is far from reality.

Performing is just standing up there and doing something. Performance takes on an edge to it. It has a more dramatic context.

As I told you, from the time I was fifteen, I thought the theater was too much involved with actors trying to make the audience love them, being over emotional.

Superwoman is more of a performer, which Lilly isn't. Having said that, I guess both of them are completely over the top, dramatic and full of energy.

When you think about Broadway, you think broad and big, but the fact is there are so many plays that are very intimate, but fill a 1,500-seat house. Plays like 'Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?' have deep moments of silence and intimacy to them.

In theater, you're playing characters. You believe you're somebody else, and you're acting.

Playing Fagin in the play and film was a small miracle.

Actors should be overheard, not listened to, and the audience is 50 percent of the performance.

Acting is make-believe. I never believe I'm the character; I want you to believe.

Acting is like any other art form, in that you have the option to go very big or go very small.

I love drama - mum calls me a Drama Queen!

The actor should not play a part. Like the Aeolian harps that used to be hung in the trees to be played only by the breeze, the actor should be an instrument played upon by the character he depicts.

I like actors - such as Margaret Rutherford and Peter Lorre - who aren't afraid to over-act like real people. When I take a job, I can always come up with ten different ways of doing the part. But I'll always choose the flashiest one. You've got to dress the window a bit.

An actor is an actor is an actor. The less personality an actor has off stage the better. A blank canvas on which to draw the characters he plays.

In Hollywood, a lot of acting feels like grandstanding.

When you see a singer on stage who is 100% committed to the personality, character and temperament of the role being sung, it's truly awesome and very powerful.

I quite like the drama of an encore. I think an encore is for those artists who are inclined to do dramatic gestures, and I certainly would say I am inclined towards them.

My act is an exaggeration of a part of me. I'm much more expressive off stage.

Theatre is, occasionally, capable of moments of truth.

As an audience, if you see 1800s or something, it more often seems that the actors are carrying the weight of the time. It always has a Shakespearean tone to it. To me, that always feels very theatrical and very unrelatable.

I think theater ought to be theatrical.

The life of a play begins and ends in the moment of performance. This is where author, actors, and directors express all they have to say. If the event has a future, this can only lie in the memories of those who were present and who retained a trace in their hearts.

Our job is to unleash the play. It's not just about your character or interaction with the other characters. There's an energy in all good plays which you have to find. And that is part and parcel of ensuring that an audience gets what it's about.