Greta Gerwig Quotes

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.

A lot of the time, as an actor, you don't have the freedom to change what your lines are, and they can often be very unnatural or difficult to portray in a real light.

The biggest battle for a lot of people who come out of the theater, which is where I was trained, is that they can never forget that a camera is pointed at them.

I don't really rehearse, because I don't really step into action until I'm forced to. The only way I prepare is just by memorizing it backward and forward so that when I get in the room, I can become the character and not think about the lines so much.

Network cable reads are always kind of stressful because it's the first time everyone's read through it out loud.

Something I learned as an actor was which scenes needed to be rehearsed and which actors are good with rehearsal, which actors learn from it, and which ones grow stale because they start to second-guess themselves.

You make a decision whether you just work on the script and believe in every moment and pick out every moment, or if you sit down and memorize lines. Once you really dig into a script, learning lines becomes almost second nature.

I had always heard that theatre is for 'serious' actors but after actually having rehearsed day in and day out, I realize how challenging it is.

You never learn to act in front of a camera. You never learn anything in front of a camera. But you learn to act in a rehearsal room with a good play and a good cast and a good director.

I love rehearsing; it's the best part of the job.

My preparation is mainly just knowing the lines and getting in and knowing where your character is, knowing what it's about and having ideas that you can put in on the day.

So many actors get caught up in their technique, and to be honest, I see it really getting in the way. I see them forcing things. I definitely do my best work when I'm free of that. But I think as an actor, I work really hard in preparing the roles.

Actors put ourselves in awkward positions all the time.

My wife says that stage acting is like being on a tightrope with no net, and being in the movies, there is a net - because you stop and go over it again. It's very technical and mechanical. On stage you're on your own.

When you work as an actor, you've got to feel safe even in what appears to be the simplest things.

With acting, I always feel conscious of what I'm doing.

Improv definitely made me a better auditioner, without a doubt. We did do an audition semester in grad school, and that was helpful for those times that you have a script and you have a few days to prepare it, to really work on sides. But the auditions I was doing in New York, if you got it the night before, you were very lucky.

I am a proud participant of the Spencer Tracy School of Acting: Know your lines, don't bump into the furniture.

I feel that once you go into rehearsal, you need to focus on the show in the room.

I've worked with little kid actors before, and when they start crying or anything like that, it makes my job so easy, because you react. A little kid crying, there's not much else to do.

As an actor, I've grown considerably. It's taken me years to get comfortable doing a romantic scene and dancing on stage in front of a live audience. I've really opened up a lot.

I can't imagine anything more debilitating, anything more challenging, anything more thrilling than to get on a stage and do any kind of play. It is such a vulnerable place for any actor to be in.

No actor ever forgets a role, so I should have realized something was wrong.

There's nowhere to hide in the theatre. You can't be the one in rehearsal who doesn't know their lines.

When a performance isn't working, it's usually because the actor is trying to do something and they're not able to express their idea very well. It's a muddled expression.