Derek Hough Quotes

You have to learn to express differently. Whenever I do TV or film, I ask if I can see the shot to see, to see if it's full body or a close-up. That helps me understand how to communicate.

I discovered that silent film is almost an advantage. You just have to think of the feeling for it to show. No lines pollute it. It doesn't take much - a gaze, an eyelash flutter - for the emotion to be vivid.

The most important thing in the face is the eyes, and if you can make the eyes talk, you're halfway there.

You can tell a lot from someone's eyes.

I assume the body language no matter what in doing voiceover. There is a transformative aspect.

Dancing is the personification of music, and music is an abstract expression of the human spirit. But still it's the act of communication, of making one feel. Otherwise it would just be gymnastics.

Sexuality is primarily a means of communicating with other people, a way of talking to them, of expressing our feelings about ourselves and them. It is essentially a language, a body language, in which one can express gentleness and affection, anger and resentment, superiority and dependence far more succinctly than would be possible verbally, where expressions are unavoidably abstract and often clumsy.

When articulation is impossible, gesticulation comes to the rescue.

Don't write anything you can phone. Don't phone anything you can talk. Don't talk anything you can whisper. Don't whisper anything you can smile. Don't smile anything you can nod. Don't nod anything you can wink.

One of my favorite actors is Paul Newman. He could tell so much with a single look, whereas some actors would need an entire five page monologue to give off the feeling of what he could say with just a single look.

Language is handy, but we humans have social and emotional connections that transcend words and are communicated - and understood - without conscious thought.

When actors are talking, they are servants of the dramatist. It is what they can show the audience when they are not talking that reveals the fine actor.

When you perform, you can convey emotions differently, and your look can reflect each of those emotions.

The body cannot lie. You cannot be somebody else onstage, no matter how good of an actor or dancer or singer you are. When you open your arms, move your finger, the audience knows who you are, you know.

There is this miraculous thing I heard Hugh Grant talking about - the thing about screen acting is that you can read people's thoughts. You are trying to register something inside and usually the eyes in cinema are where you will register that.

I found out was, by the rhythm of my chewing, how I chewed fast, slow or what have you, I could tell the audience what my character was thinking and feeling.

The writing is important, but the way you say the line and the pause you give it, the facial expression - all of that is very important.

It isn't about the words you say. It's about the energetic message you send.

One of my favorite things to do is not to speak on screen. In theater it's different because there's a lot of emphasis on language - it's a different medium. But that is one of the most wonderful things about film. A person's face can say so much more than their voice can.

A lot of the stuff that I do with Betty is in the eyes. A lot of the feelings that I evoke with her are unspoken, so that's been fun to play with.

I like to use my hands. When I was in theatre in college, that was one of my biggest notes: 'You use your hands too much.'

A lot can be said with just a look, or the way the body moves. Each song is a different character. So each song takes on a different movement of the body. And the body has to go with the subject and the attitude that you have toward that subject.

The best way to show an emotion is not through a character's words, but their smallest expressions - to take what an actor would visually do and try putting that down on the page for the reader to 'see.'

Truly great actors carry their characters in silence with them. They communicate without words the relationships that predate the movie.

I can look into someone's eyes and feel like I know her better, versus a phone call, where you can't get that same type of emotion. That's why text messaging gets you in trouble: You can't bond, and emoticons explain only so much.