Morgan Freeman Quotes

Juilliard definitely emphasizes the theater. They don't train - at all really - for film acting. It's mostly process-oriented, pretty much for the stage.

Film acting is really the trick of doing moments. You rarely do a take that lasts more than 20 seconds. You really earn your spurs acting onstage. I needed to do that for myself. I would hate to say at the end of everything that I never did a stage play.

I've never worked as hard as when I was at drama school. It's the most professional environment I've ever been in.

Juilliard is wonderful in that they don't pick just one way of working. They give you a palette. There is method acting. There is a lot of attention to Shakespeare and verse.

As I got older, I would study privately with some coaches. Then I found Lee Strasberg, which I loved.

I didn't act professionally before going to drama school. I don't know if I had the confidence. I didn't think I'd get in when I first auditioned for drama school, and then I did.

I like working one-on-one with someone, and I think that to go to a school of acting isn't really my thing.

I think the best directors provide you with a safe environment where they can instill you with confidence and allow you to try things out and not feel like you're failing or that you're doing it wrong.

It took me years to actually get comfortable on the stage. I prefer the intimacy of screen; it comes easier to me. In theater, you have to be louder and bigger - that was harder for many years in my teens. But now I've conquered that. I eat up the stage. I love it.

There is probably some great acting that goes on in movies from people who have never been on a stage, but if you are in for the long haul, you'd be missing an enormous part of what being an actor is if you're not part of theater.

I'm not a classically trained actor. I'm not a product of Stavlovski method or anything like that.

In England, when we're at drama school, we spend a lot of time learning the craft from playwrights and stage actors, who are very well trained in the basics of acting because they need to get it right the first time - you can't have second or third takes when you're in front of a live audience, unlike in film.

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.

I know that if I'd had to go and take an exam for acting, I wouldn't have got anywhere. You don't take exams for acting, you take your courage.

I have been taking classes and I'm familiar with stage, but I'm not as familiar with acting on camera.

There's no doubt that I owe a lot to my training of stage acting.

I never did any sports at school. It wasn't until I moved to America, to New York, when I was about 20 that I actually thought that if I wanted to be an actress I might have to start working out.

I want to get better as an actor, to keep trying to work harder, trying to discover something different. In some ways, it's a pretty frightening experience. But normally, I do tend to walk against fear and hope that I'll be able to survive.

Every job I took, I was deeply uncomfortable in terms of feeling unqualified. Every step, every risk I took, built confidence.

I do think - I always tell that to young people - go to college, do theater, work with an audience. Don't try to learn how to act in front of millions and millions of people. Don't make that your first ambition, to be on a sitcom or get into the movies. Learn who you are as an actor, and the best way to do that is to do it in front of an audience.

When I got out of high school, I was working in restaurants in New York City, when I heard Bill Anderson from The Neighborhood Playhouse was doing private lessons. I started taking classes, and it was a lot of improv and Meisner and repetition.

I studied with Sandy Meisner at the Neighborhood Playhouse. I was in the last class to study with him before he had his larynx removed, so I actually remember the sound of his voice. He was an incredible teacher.

It took many years of acting classes to get even remotely comfortable, but that's OK. It helped me so much on a personal level, not to mention professionally.

I was very fortunate to have gone to drama school in London for three years, and that was classical training in the sense that a lot of it was dominated by stage work, so I would love to go back to stage.

There's not a day that I don't work on vocals, have vocal coaches, go to acting classes, read books.