Matt Besser Quotes

Jeff Bridges taught me a lot about how to keep a scene fresh.

I'm the girl that waits for the director to say, 'I like that,' or 'Can you boost it up?,' or 'Can you pull it down?' I'm that kind of actor. I started in theater, so that's the feedback that I'm accustomed to. It's the feedback that I really thrive off of.

In a rehearsal room, your real resource as an actor aren't the things around you; your resources are your imagination and your director and the other actors. In those close quarters, your imagination and your skills are what you turn to.

That is one of the reasons one enjoys acting. Now and again, you get scenes where you work with somebody really good and you have a good time trying to make it really work and really work well.

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.

For a child actor, it's a matter of listening, reacting, and being able to put yourself in a new place without being scared.

A lot of the time, as an actor, you don't have the freedom to change what your lines are, and they can often be very unnatural or difficult to portray in a real light.

The rehearsal is where it all happens for an actor.

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.

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

I was more used to acting onstage, for a long time. I don't know, maybe I was temperamentally more suited to stage stuff. And there are things about the stage that I miss in a lot of ways.

My rule of thumb is to always do what's on the page first. Then you can talk to your director about playing with it. Improv frees me up in a character, but I would be mortified if the writers who agonized over their words assumed I thought my improv was more valuable.

There's pre-production, and the second part is when you start rehearsal. Pre-production was a very large learning curve for me.

As an actor, I've been taught to just stay with your scene partner, and whatever they do, let it affect you, be spontaneous.

I find acting slightly nerve racking, but I like the challenge.

I like to do theater and hopefully be effective. Most actors, at least contemporary actors of my generation, can't do it. They don't have the chops.

I love working with actors, and it's all been based on my being trained in the theater.

As an actor, you're constantly looking to be pushed.

Acting is an art and a science and there is more to me then that young blonde kid.

To be honest, I never went to school for acting, and I never learned to break down a script. I took acting classes my whole life, but they never taught me anything about acting. They just taught me about myself.

Every role sort of teaches you how to prepare for it.

It's exciting to do something like this because usually what happens in theater is that, after the first or second reading of a play, it falls apart completely and the rehearsal process is such that you begin to pick up the pieces and put it back together again.

My favorite thing about being an actor is that I get to be so many different people in one lifetime. You sort of get to be all of these different characters.

I understand what it is that actors do. They embody someone that they aren't.

I like to have something to base a role on.