James Spader Quotes

One tries to be an observer as an actor and indeed as a director because the small things, the give-away things are what are really interesting to a performer.

I love theater work because of the immediate effect your performance has on the audience. And I love the repetition; I love getting on the same stage for more than a month and reciting the same lines, trying to make a small or large step towards an improvement in my acting.

People often argue about this. Obviously one of the skills in performance is acting, and you can't expect every Romeo to really be in love with their Juliet!

I love acting and really taking on another person, another life.

One of the skills you have to master in theater is the ability to make the audience believe that things that aren't there are there - just like when you're acting against CGI. Also, in a theater, the people in the back row can't see the whites of your eyes. Or your lips moving as you deliver dialogue.

I want to break into the acting industry. It's something I have a great deal of respect for; it's a passion of mine. It's so amazing, the differences between acting and being an athlete, but the one commonality is they both evoke emotion in the viewer. And those emotions are real. So I think that's pretty cool.

The only thing we are as actors are messengers. That's all we are. Correct? We are delivering the playwright's intention through the concept of the director. And I come on stage; if I feel confident in the role, then I give it away.

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

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

In theater, you're playing characters. You believe you're somebody else, and you're acting.

You've got to love acting and that's true for me. I love the idea of getting on stage and getting in front of a camera.

People prefer doing films. That is not the case with me. I don't do theatre because I have to but because it makes me feel alive. I enjoy the whole process of rehearsing, though repetition can make it tedious.

Acting for screen is very different from acting on stage, and then obviously when you dance... everything is a physical embodiment. But the discipline is the same approach. You have to take both things seriously; nothing well-crafted is by mistake.

The next day I was in my school's production of All My Sons. This was the performance where I realized something was happening between me and the audience that I hadn't recognized before.

The actor depends wholly on himself. He gives his performance in what, to him, seems the most effective manner.

Performing, for me, has always been a very inner process.

In film, you're always using your tools, your body, your voice, your emotions, but onstage, you use them in a different way.

Actors have to make you believe that it's happening for the first time and all that jazz and make it human and at the same time entertain you.

I'm enjoying it, but I still don't know why I'm hooked on acting.

To start, I wasn't really interested in acting at all, and I didn't make much impact. The first play I was in was on for five nights and I didn't show up for two of them and nobody noticed. But I stayed because that's where my friends were, and after a while I found myself wanting to inhabit other people's worlds and lives.

Acting is experience with something sweet behind it.

In theater, the wellspring of the character comes from the doing of it, like a trial by fire, but in front of an audience.

I love acting. It's an interesting challenge to make something that doesn't exist appear like it's happening, and to do it in a real way.

I've been on stage plenty of times, and one of the things about being a stage actress is you have a 3-month run to revisit the story nightly and play it again.

I immerse myself right into my character whether or not I'm relating to people live as an actor on stage or whatever.