Kelli Williams Quotes

There is always pressure playing a real living person and even pressure developing a character from scratch.

I'm terrified of learning lines, and I've always been terrified that I won't learn them.

I'm an actor, I worry about everything.

I constantly have anxiety about being the lead of the show. I don't talk about it because it scares me. But I've always wanted to be part of something where I could work on a character in such a big manner, and you get offered that with all the trappings of being the lead of the show.

I have such respect for guest actors. They don't know all the characters as deeply as the regulars, and the cast isn't your family, so you have more at stake.

I didn't stutter when I was reading lines in a script. When I got away from myself, I didn't have that problem.

I always said that I wouldn't use a teleprompter, and if I start to sing real flat, I'll hang it up.

The acting is better when you know your material is being judged.

If you feel uncomfortable on stage, you can very easily descend into a sort of abyss, convinced you're the worst actor ever, that you're a disgrace to the profession, that you're a disgrace to yourself. It's an awful feeling.

The hardest part of acting is not when I'm acting, It's when I'm not.

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.

So much of performing is a mind game. You're memorizing thousands of notes, and if you start thinking about it in the wrong way, everything can blow up in your face.

If you're a comic, you don't have a rehearsal room; you rehearse on stage. My main concern is remembering everything. I've written lots of material, but how do you memorise 90 minutes? That's one hell of a long speech. I've always had problems with that.

As an actor you have one great fear: pimples!

I don't like a lot of rehearsing.

Doing the long lines - it looks easy when actresses do it: they just say it straight up, looks like they do nothing wrong, they just keep going, but it's not like that.

Musical auditions are always the worst because you have to sing and act, and that's so stressful.

When some people get parts, they feel they can now relax, but for me it was always the opposite. Sometimes before I do a movie or before I act out a scene, I may not sleep well the night before. If I don't know what the scene is about, I might get all worked up.

I've done auditions where the casting director is taking the paper out of my hand in the middle of reading.

I've been onstage once for one performance with four days' rehearsal.

You're in a scene with Laura Linney or Oliver Platt or John Hickey or Alan Alda and these amazing actors and actresses, and you're like, 'Oh my God, I haven't even started; I'm nothing compared to these people!'

If I know I have to memorize lines, I'm really gonna try to memorize lines. It's hard for me sometimes, because somebody wrote these words and you're trying really hard to get them the way they said it.

I'm not a big fan of rehearsing.

You'll never see a good performance out of me, in terms of a character, when the camera isn't rolling.

Most of my nightmares involve me forgetting my lines in a stage play.