Gale Harold Quotes

If you feel like you're doing terrible in a scene, that usually means that you're not listening because you're too preoccupied with yourself... you're not listening to your scene partner. If you listen, you're naturally going to get that response that the camera's going to pick up because you just react.

It's sort of the most important thing for acting, is to listen to the person you're dealing with.

Mostly I work really unconsciously, and I think if the scenes are really well written, which they are, and if I just throw myself into it, I don't really think about it.

One of the hardest things to do in acting is to stop thinking about yourself and stop being self-conscious.

Sometimes when you're doing fantasy, that's the most important thing, is to be a blank space, because the last thing you want to do ever as an actor is judge yourself or the character or the movie that you're in. You want to just play the moment as best you can. Juilliard helped me do that.

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

When you're acting in a scene, you're focused on doing the scene. You can't break character and go, 'Oh my God, I love what you're doing!'

The most important thing for me as an actor playing a character is to make you laugh. That's my No. 1 goal.

If you really do want to be an actor who can satisfy himself and his audience, you need to be vulnerable. You must reach the emotional and intellectual level of ability where you can go out stark naked, emotionally, in front of an audience.

The actor already comes with emotions to the scene: fear, the fear of being in front of the camera. It is this fear that spurs the emotion of the scene. I too am afraid; I don't know exactly what I am searching for. On the set, we are all participating in this fear together.

In acting there's two different things: You're either pitching in a scene, or you're catching.

If I do a scene with an actor who doesn't have much experience, I say, 'I tell you what we're going to do: You just listen to me, and then you respond. We don't have to do any acting.' And that's good advice because you shouldn't see the acting.

What I learned is that acting is to a large extent about trying to stave off self-doubt long enough to be natural and real onstage.

What's beautiful about the actual acting class environment is that you can use it to push through everything: push your voice, push your inhibitions, push your fears, push your confidence, push your vulnerability, push your silences.

In movies, you get to explore parts of yourself that in real life, people shy away from, like looking stupid or embarrassing yourself or getting too angry, anything inappropriate. As an actor, you walk into those moments.

If you're working opposite an actor who can act, then all you have to do is listen and respond.

Inevitably, when a scene isn't working for me, it's because I'm being self-conscious, and I'm not putting enough of my focus on my fellow actor.

When you act with phenomenal actors, it makes your job much easier because all you have to do is react.

A lot of actors will complain about the green screen work, but what you do get to do is what you probably should have learned, from the beginning, on stage. You have to create it in your mind and really go there to bring it. Part of the fun of acting is those challenges. You feel goofy, but sometimes that's a good feeling.

Good actors are always looking for props. They're looking for behavior. It makes it a lot easier. You're not solely dependent of what's coming out of your mouth. You're also less self-conscious, less aware of the camera.

One of the things an actor tries to access is immediacy, so that you feel like you're experiencing it for the first time. But when you're playing a character who knows what's going to happen and can't stop himself to reacting although he knows he can't stop himself from reacting, there's a whole separate set of things to consider.

Actors are very demanding because they have nowhere to hide. If I write a scene, it doesn't turn out very well, I don't ever have to show it to anyone; when you turn the camera on, or when you walk on stage, they have to feel like what's happening is real.

I went to theater school where there is a lot of holding each other's faces and crying, and a lot of kid gloves.

You're living your life the entire time in both worlds - it's not like they say, 'Action' and you're like, 'Here we go, we're in this thing,' because that's where bad acting comes from.

The more and more I work with really great actors, the more it's about opening yourself up to what they bring.