Ian Watson Quotes

A good part's a good part. You can play serious and funny moments with a well-written role.

My first movie was 'Diner.' My second movie was 'Tender Mercies.' I did really good work.

If it's an excellent script, I enjoy it tremendously, the acting part of it.

The role of an actor is to make every character believable.

Characters never live with me in film the way they do on stage, and they have certain ramifications that movies just never have.

I really never thought I was that good at film. And honestly still don't. My strength is language. My background is monologues and a certain kind of Brechtian spin on theater.

I was trained on the stage, and I can do stage as well as I can do movies, but I prefer films.

My relationship with every film is more or less the same, but the experience is the difference. It comes with the people I am working with, the character I play.

I believe that the performance of my actors is of utmost importance to make a good film.

I like to do a lot of research for my films and live my character.

Every time you're on stage, you're acting.

No actor can rise above the script of the film.

I've made many films and only a few times I've played real people.

Theatre is the principal job of an actor. An actor's job is to tell a story to someone in a room. TV and film can be great and I really love doing it, but it is a different way of telling a story.

Sometimes the writing can be so good that the actor doesn't really have to do anything.

I cannot tell you that I ever fell in love with the theater as an audience. I fell in love with the theater as an actor for a period of time, but I have struggled as an audience, and I struggle more now than then. I was always a movie guy.

If I talk about Charles Dance I am talking about something else, something I operate and wind up and have to make an impression with and use to transmit someone else's screenplay.

I never studied anything about film technique in school. Eventually, I realized that cinema and theater are not so different: from the gut to the heart to the head of a character is the same journey for both.

It's an acting job - acting natural.

I'd say I'm definitely an actor first and foremost, but I love filmmaking.

The best actors are always the ones who've directed as well, as they understand all the problems you face.

Acting has to do with saying it as if you meant it, so for me the words are always very important. It's very important for me to know my lines, know them so well that I don't have to think about them.

I love film and TV, the medium of them, just because it's such a smaller screen. It's much more precise. Ideally, I'd like to do maybe a film a year of some sort and use that to work more in the theatre because theatre really is my first love.

I like the detail work of telling a story in small pieces, as is done in movie-making, and also the long leap of faith needed to see a theatre performance through each night. Both require focus and self-discipline.

Acting is not about knowing all this stuff; it's about character.