Michael Emerson Quotes

Every audition is different, but I get incredibly nervous and insecure and worked up for however long I have to prep - that's when I get to spin. But you're not allowed to spin once you enter the room. Doubt really can't enter the room when you're auditioning - unless it's part of the character.

I don't like a lot of rehearsing.

I've never liked rehearsing too much.

I find it difficult to work if I don't know the lines, you know, and not just knowing - they're second nature to me. Then, whatever happens in the performance when you're actually doing it, you're not going to go off. You're going to retain all of that. So I like to have my lines.

The important thing with memorising a part is not to force it. Sometimes when you're rehearsing, you'll think it's not going in, but it is. On stage, you have to trust that the lines are there, because they are. The real challenge is to relax.

When you get to the point where you know the material so well and you know the character so well that you can just sort of play off of whoever your reader is - that's the best feeling at an audition.

My acting coach I've got here, Richard Lawson, he's been doing good, just telling me to calm down sometimes and just be me.

There's nowhere to hide in the theatre. You can't be the one in rehearsal who doesn't know their lines.

One was never taught how to begin at drama school. But all it required was one intake of breath.

All the things you can do to prepare for a role that free you, in the moment, are great. You have this muscle memory for things. You don't have to act it as much, once you've done it enough.

What I do is just go over and over and over my lines and learn the script so well that I can just be easy and relaxed. That's the way I always work.

Personally, I need to learn every word on the page before I go in and audition. I have not mastered the skill of holding pages in my hand and acting with pages in my hand. I find that every time I have to look at the page it takes me completely out of the scene.

If the script's good, everything you need is in there. I just try and feel it, and do it honestly. I also don't learn things for auditions, because I feel like it's just a test of memorizing rather than being real. Maybe every other actor would think that was terrible, I don't know. But it seems to have worked for me, so far.

Any acting job that I ever got, I always treated it like I was a neophyte; I didn't know what I was doing, and I was going to work just as hard as I do on my stand-up.

If I could go back to my first year of acting school, I'd probably say: 'Relax. Stop taking yourself so seriously.'

Whenever you go into an audition, you have to be as prepared as possible.

It's been about ten years since I've worked with actors who knew their lines!

I think one of the mistakes actors make is we're so focused on what we're going to say.

Understand that the time in the audition is your time. Really own it and take control of it. And do what you prepared. Focus on really executing what it is that you intended to do.

I went to L.A. and got an acting coach for one day. Then I went in to audition and I smashed it. You have to take risks, and one thing I know about people: your presence is everything.

'Body of Proof' was interesting because... I didn't feel I needed to prove anything in that audition. I didn't over-prepare it, but I was just very relaxed in it.

I'm not a big fan of rehearsing.

Acting is just a process of relaxation, actually. Knowing the text so well and trusting that the instinct and the subconscious mind, whatever you want to call it, is going to take over.

I don't think I'm sharp enough to not prepare and come on set and kill it.

I don't like rehearsing.