Andrew Wyeth Quotes

I think, first of all, every time you want to play somebody who is real is always challenging and always scary, because you are given a responsibility of someone's real life.

In order to be totally spontaneous, you can't be too obsessed with accuracy, but if you're inaccurate in a drawing, it will look fake, and when you act, it will sound fake. You have to find miraculously some proper balance between the two, but there's no formula.

I think that always, as an actor, I don't want to overstep or pretend that I'm doing anything more than I'm doing.

I guess you should approach the roles differently when they're actual people who have been, this is the difference. Getting the accent exact, or the hair exact is less important in a situation like this.

I really realize the more movies I do just how important - it's so cliche when people say it, because everybody says it nowadays - but it's so important to keep it grounded. I totally understand what that means.

There is such a cliche to certain roles that all I can do is to try to make them realistic and work for the times, and so the audience actually won't see me as a caricature of something, but rather as an actual person.

I think every role you take on, you should take on the responsibility of doing the best representation of that person or that character or that role. When it is a human being that has actually existed, and it is a person that people know of, yeah, you feel an even more amount of pressure to do a good job.

Being an actor, you are recognized for being somebody else, whereas these books are distilled from me.

I approach a comedy the same way I do a drama. I try to make it as real as possible.

I like to try to make the characters I play be as human as possible.

Hopefully, any character I play has an anchor in reality.

It's challenging to take on something else that is not you and make it very real and have others be able to associate with it. It's wonderful to provoke thought.

When I was starting out, doing guest spots on TV, and even commercials, I would go in with a whole crazy wardrobe and some terrible accent. Obviously, I was doing too much. If you bring too much flavor to it, it's absurd. There's something to just being spontaneous.

I tend to play more true-to-life characters in real situations.

I desire you would use all your skill to paint my picture truly like me, and not flatter me at all; but remark all these roughnesses, pimples, warts, and everything as you see me, otherwise I will never pay a farthing for it.

When you're playing Marilyn Monroe, you have a responsibility to look and sound like her that you don't when you're playing people who weren't ever in the public eye.

I think there's a responsibility to any character that you play that was a living persona.

I've got no pretence that I want to do 'Hamlet' or anything, I know my limitations.

Anything in which you're playing someone real does make you feel responsible for making the story as true as it can be.

Everybody is always like, 'You must be a really good liar,' and no, I'm actually a truth teller, and I'm telling someone else's truth. If I'm lying, then I'm not doing my job correctly.

There is a sense of responsibility when you play a real-life character because there are people who will see your work, make comparisons, and judge you. They have all the rights to do that because they know the real person. They might have seen that person also.

I think, for an artist, when you're drawing somebody who actually exists, it's a much steeper critical curve, as there is an actual representation of that person out there. You can't just interpret it any way you want.

I found it liberating to sing on camera. On stage, you have to indicate having a thought, and the word you are singing must indicate it as well, but on camera, you can have ideas, you can take in all the stimuli that the character would be taking in, there's a freedom you get, and you don't have the obligation to transmit each idea to the back of the house. It felt so much closer to reality for me.

Don't be snarky, but don't be saccharine. Don't pander, but don't shut people out. Go straight down the line with the performance.

Suit the action to the word : the word to the action : with this special observance that you o'erstep not the modesty of nature.