Angela Lansbury Quotes

For me, it was much more important to continue to learn my craft as an actor and get a bit of flesh on the bones.

As an actor, I think every moment in your life is giving you a new set of tools. You’re constantly absorbing new information that you can put back onto the screen.

From 1965 to 1974, I served the best possible apprenticeship for an actor. I learned firsthand how a truck driver lives, what a bartender does, how a salesman thinks. I had to make a life inside those jobs, not just pretend.

I had to focus and create a character in Bagger Vance, not just do my 'Will Smith' thing and get paid.

I think every role you do prepares you for the next one. Of course, 'Nashville' has been, and will continue to be, a huge learning experience for me as an actor. It's something that I grew a lot doing.

I've played a prostitute now three times. I don't know how it's come about that way. It's just a matter of me growing up.

My experiences and training back at drama school were very enlightening. I always believe in improving, be it kathak or my acting skills, and would want to experiment more when it comes to work.

As actors you're always going to take certain roles that are in your comfort zone and take ones that aren't.

Definitely when you get handed roles like Joel in 'The Last of Us,' that's something that will change your life, and I learned so much from that role.

I'd always envied actors who got to play real people or got to do research. I've always just had these scripts where, I mean not in a bad way, but it was right on the page.

That period, doing 'Angels in America' in '94 and then filming with 'Basquiat' in '95, those were gateway years for me as an artist. Two gateways, one into the film industry and one into the world of theater, each formative to me in different, equally essential ways.

I've realized over the years I either play very good people or very bad people, and I think I always enjoy the very bad people more.

The protagonists that I've played tend to be people who make trouble. Or even if they don't make it, they certainly disrupt things. It's fun to do that in life as well. But I don't think I ever played myself.

There was a little of this, 'Oh, you're such a sweet girl!' That's a wonderful thing to have in life; I don't mind it at all for life. But I remember, the first role I was ever cast in as a not-so-sweet-girl, I was so happy.

I am obsessed with the idea of transformation. I have been very lucky so far to play very different roles - and I would love for that to continue.

When I'm acting, I just come up with people I've known, and I stick with it.

There was a time when I only wanted to show off, but as I've grown older, I've realised that acting isn't an end in itself. You act to communicate something, and if you have to use an accent or become thin or fat, that's part of your job.

A lot of shows where I'm playing a senator or a congressman or a doctor or a high-priced attorney, I do a number on myself. "I am a powerful attorney, or a doctor." It's a little convincing job I do on myself first to know I can walk out on the set and know that I can be this guy.

I always knew I wanted to be an actress, and I had the attitude that I would learn more under people like Samuel L. Jackson, Laurence Fishburne or Mike Myers than from someone who had never starred in a movie. I just didn't think that someone who had never been in a movie could teach me how to act in one.

I'm an actor, so I love to be degraded!

I've been in front of the camera a million times as a musician, and even directed a few music videos. So, I know a lot about spacing, focus, blocking, etcetera. So, acting isn't totally new for me. Still, I find it fascinating, because you actually get to be another person.

In Yale they convinced me I had no talent, even though I was always working. They cast me mostly as prostitutes and old women, and I stayed because I loved the writers. I loved Chris Durang and Wendy Wasserstein. I was always doing their work in the Yale Cabaret.

I've never done coke or anything, and I've never played a character who has, so I don't know whether I would actually try coke if I had to play a character who took coke.

I want to continue growing as an actress. There are ways that I can reach quicker, or deeper, with acting.

I loved getting classical training in terms of acting. I would've stayed in acting school for the rest of my life if I could have. It was this amazing period of my life where everything was so safe.