Peter Hedges Quotes

I learned that the best way to work is to allow the scene to live on its own before making major adjustments, whether in rehearsal or on film.

The exciting part of acting, I don't know how else to explain it, are those moments when you surprise yourself.

I try to really focus on the actors I'm working with and kind of read and respond to their behavior.

I really miss the rehearsal process of theater.

I would love to get great performances from actors as a director, because that's what I'm always looking for, a director that's going to help me go places I've never been before.

Working with Danny Thomas was truly an adventure every week. Danny didn't always say the words as they appeared in the script. I learned more by osmosis than by sitting down together. He was a force to be reckoned with: an explorer of television.

As a filmmaker I find it much more rewarding to work with actors who are classically trained. It's about the work and only the work.

I do not use any set methods, not even The Method. The character after all is in the lines.

What is important to me as an actor is that, even if I have to spread my arms, take my shirt off on a mountain top with my heroine in a chiffon sari, it still has to be me and my twist or my funny take on it.

Acting is an aesthetic career, which is annoying.

I would be an actress for the rest of my life just because it's really relaxing. Writing is hard work, and stand-up is so stressful before you get on stage, but acting is a complete ensemble experience.

From the moment you say 'action,' this is the fun part - things should happen that surprise you, excite you, scare you, turn you on, make you laugh. If things aren't surprising you, when you say 'cut,' whisper things to the actors that will make them do things that do surprise you.

There's a tremendous amount to be gained from being a performer, and being an artist, and being an actor.

As an actor, acting is like playing a sport. You do this thing that's intangible, and while it's happening, it's great. But then when it's done, there's really no tangible product. Someone else is capturing it and turning it into something tangible.

The relationship with the cast has everything to do with how a performance develops, and in a sense that while you're discovering a play in the course of rehearsal with the director, you're also discovering it with your fellow actors. We're all in it together.

I enjoyed acting and marveled that one could get paid for doing it.

You know, working as an actor, I'm always working within my own imagination.

The whole thing about acting, the draw for me, is the opportunity to do things you don't get to do in real life.

Acting is something different to everybody. I just know that if you watch an actor or actress getting better and better, I think that's them just understanding themselves better and better.

The happiest moments for me, creatively, are doing readings of a play around a table where there's no audience.

We're lucky enough, especially in these 'Madagascar' films, to be working with some of the best people in the industry, who are not only great actors, but great comedians and improvisers and filmmakers. And they then become a part of creating their characters.

An actor is supposed to be a sensitive instrument.

Acting is still, of course, what I love to do most. The beauty of it is that by changing characters, it never gets boring.

I've never so appreciated what actors do and how strange it is.

I am a really writer-oriented actor.