Laurie Holden Quotes

When I see an emotion being enacted by a great actor, I always feel I can never do that.

If you're getting ready to do a really emotional scene then, right before it, you're probably not going to be outside playing basketball.

You have to find it in the moment, and that's one of the challenges of being an actor - especially a film actor - is that you have to maintain these heightened emotions for long periods of time. There's no trick to it. You just have to do.

Sometimes fake laughing is hard once you've done a scene 18 times. I don't want to brag, but I have a reputation for being very, very good at that. It's funny finding what's challenging about acting as you go.

I can watch movies that I've been in, and if there's an emotional scene, I remember specifically what I was using, what I was thinking about, because I am very specific in how I work.

Most people when they see me cry for a shot, say, 'Wow, what a natural!' But I actually do cry and break down.

People think that unless you become the de-glam girl, who has horrible things happening to her, you're not really acting; all it takes to cry for the camera is some glycerine. Not doing anything is what's difficult; I know a lot of actors who will agree with me.

I don't like working by a monitor. I stand right next to the camera, and I'm very performance-oriented. That really means everything to me, whether it's doing an improv of a joke or an emotional scene, and everything in between.

When I'm singing a song on stage, I hate hypocrites. If you don't put yourself in that lyric and emote and be what that lyric says that you are, then you're just going through the motions and you're being hypocritical. I just take that same approach with acting. I just take the dialogue and I emote it and become that. I use the same technic.

It's not like I prepare anymore, or have to think about my son being dead to get emotional. If you're working with a good actor and you're reacting off of them and you have a good script, it just comes organically. It's just stored in your body. So that emotion will just be brought out of you, as opposed to trying to force it.

Playing a drunk doesn't mean being a drunk, only bad actors try to be drunk. A real drunk tries to be sober, he wants another drink. How a character hides their feelings tells us who they are, no one shows their feelings except bad actors.

That's why there's so much bad acting out there, because you could see actors watching themselves.

Learn your lines… plant your feet… look the other actor in the eye… say the words… mean them.

I don't like showing the technique. I don't like people who say, "Here, I'm going to act, but first I have to bounce off this wall." If you have to bounce off the wall, do it by yourself. Don't feature the technique. My old drama coach used to say, "Don't just do something, stand there." Gary Cooper wasn't afraid to do nothing.

Acting is always sort of the same - like you want to be - you know you're pretending and you want to make it as real as you can. That's the similarity. The mediums other than that are completely different. I mean you know with camera work you're doing really small detailed work and you know if you do anything too big you've sort of failed. And with stage, especially with the play I'm doing right now, I'm doing a farce, and it's so over the top that you can't actually be too big. So it's just completely different.

As an actor, you always find your way. You have whatever preparation techniques you use, and you just go with the scene when you're on set. You can only plan so much when you're working, because things have to come naturally in the scene.

Acting means living, it's all I do.

I studied with Stella Adler and I didn't like the representational aspect of most opera singers. Most of the opera singers had not a false, but over theatrical way of presenting.

I was a Shakespearean actor, I had preconceived ideas, line readings - everything was a gesture, everything was conscious.

The only rule I have when writing is to try to tell the truth. That doesn't mean you can't exaggerate, edit, rewrite things to make them more dramatic. But emotional truth is what I look for in writing.

As an actor, you can't say, "I'm going to try to be cool at all cost when I do this," because that's the opposite of what you need to do as an actor.

I've been given lots of great advice, in my life. As an actor, just being as honest and as present as you can be.

In the movie, you have to decide as an actor how you are going to give a character presence. You can't really move, walk, and talk like yourself. This creates something so you have to find something "other".

Acting is kind of brutal.

I asked a girl who came from America to England, when I was only English, and she admitted she had been to a drama school. And I said, "What did they teach you?" And she said, "They taught me to be a candle burning in an empty room." I'm happy to say she was laughing while she said it, but she meant it. I've never learned to be a candle burning in an empty room. So I go on the screen, and I say whatever I'm told to say.