Dana Spiotta Quotes

I started lip-synching with "Losing My Religion." There were a few horrendous mistakes we made, but I own those mistakes. I'm embarrassed by them. I always say when I look back at anything I've ever done, it's with equal dollops of humiliation and triumphant glory.

My school friends thought I was outgoing and bubbly, but that masked a lot of insecurities, and maybe that's the reason I chose drama - to build a bit of self-confidence. I had a great teacher, and I won a few speech and drama competitions and just fell in love with it.

Once you really understand your role... that's why I think actors get lost in a series. Everybody wants to be the quarterback or the game-winning wide receiver. I've been around long enough and done enough stuff to where I don't feel that way. I just want to do what I do as well as possible.

I did a play in high school, then one in college. My first professional experience was off-off-Broadway. I'm conveniently blocking the title. I'm sure I was terrible.

I was terrible in my first play. After that experience, I had to face that I wasn't good enough to play with the big boys. I had to go away and learn, so I worked in regional theater for three years. I even understudied at the Kennedy Center.

Performing is an experience, for me, that is as humbling as it is energizing.

Acting is therapeutic. I say I'm not shy, but... Acting is a very vulnerable experience, and you've got to be really confident to put yourself out there to be judged.

I have considered myself a mature actor.

I think you accidentally learn things in high school that turn out to be life lessons when you are able to step back a bit and study them in more depth.

I enjoyed doing Lipstick, but it scared me. I was very nervous. I couldn't wait for it to be over. It was very real, and I was just a kid.

The hardest role that I've ever tried to play was Clara Johnson in 'Light in the Piazza' at Lincoln Center. It was the least fun I've ever had, but the most beautiful experience I've ever had. I could not understand her. I could not put my feet in her shoes. I came home every night, and I was depressed.

I like doing small parts, because I don't feel I'm that practised in acting. It's like making baby steps towards a bigger goal.

I was so naive when I began acting, professionally.

I really was a terrible actor. I did it for years in my twenties because it was like being at university again.

When I started performing, I played acoustic music, partly because that way you don't have to worry about interacting too much with other people creatively. Asserting myself in that way was not really a strong point for me.

Never in my short career, I've never had that experience where I wasn't sure if I was acting or if it was real.

In the summer after sixth grade, I took a class at St. Robert Bellarmine. My first role, I was the villain in a play, and I forgot all my lines. I think I cried my way through the performance.

For most entertainers, there is a single experience, one defining moment, when confidence replaces the self-doubt that most of us wrestle with.

My first acting experience was a non-speaking role as a robot. My costume was a cardboard box covered in tinfoil, but I was so shy I refused to go on stage.

I left it for seven years before going back on stage. I know now not to leave it so long.

I found at an early age the times when I learned the most about myself was when I got thrown out there on a stage in front of a microphone when you didn't really want to be out there, where you're kind of afraid.

I'm sure acting is a deeply neurotic thing to do.

The experience of having a child does crack you wide open. I felt like I suddenly had to rebuild the skin that I'd grown over the years before having a child. Perhaps that might be quite interesting in terms of acting.

I enjoy acting. It's not that I begin to think I'm getting better. I now fully know that I've made no improvement whatsoever since I was 20. I can live with it.

I was 26 when I went to my first acting class. I'm naturally quite shy. I'm a quite private person. There's this really strange acting class in New York called Black Nexxus. For someone who's slightly shy or self-conscious, it's the most frightening thing you can do.