Max von Sydow Quotes

You learn to act by acting. You only get so much from acting class. You have to put your act on stage.

Everyone brings their own particular skill set to the job, and acting training can work for a lot of actors, and it can't. I've seen a lot of really good actors go into acting schools and then come out a little bit corrupted.

I think all great actors - and I don't classify myself as one of them, incidentally - but I think all great actors listen well and I've learned that from a lot of the very good actors with whom I've worked - to really listen to what people say.

Good actors I've worked with all started out making faces in a mirror, and you keep making faces all your life.

I recommend doing some sort of acting class, something that can eventually get you in front of an agent or a manager, and practice is very important.

It's not like every actor needs to train, but an actor will either develop their process through training or through working.

That's basically how I learned everything as an actor. I was just a kid, and I worked with these actors, and I'd ask them questions, and then something would work for me, and I'd try to move forward with it.

An actor will use every piece of information at their disposal, or a good actor will.

Many people think voice over artists just read, there's much more to it. Without acting beats, scene study and improving skills, you won't make it.

Vary the pace... is one of the foundations of all good acting.

Watching a good actor is the best way to learn.

Your primary tools, as an actor, are observation and imagination. You can pretty much get everything you need from that, and you do. It brings back that element of pretend.

In the acting world, you can really only become good by practicing and doing it, and I just think every time you walk onto a set you just become better and better. I think I'm in a totally different space than I was back then on that first movie set.

I'm formally trained, I don't know what classically trained really means. I've worked with Sanford Meisner. And I've worked at Circle Rep with Marshall W. Mason and Lanford Wilson and some really good people. I was lucky. I had a lot of really good influences.

Basically, the actor's job is to pay attention to the script.

The best way to study to be an actor is to interact genuinely with the people around you and observe and listen.

I'm so into playing different characters, even when I was on Nickelodeon. I just observe.

My advice has always been to study the craft of acting if you want to be an actor. There are many great schools that teach acting. NYU being one of them.

As an actor, your life experience is just as important as studying.

I really think that studying theater early on really helped me to be able to identify how to get into a character, because it's such a mysterious thing. Learning objective acting in the beginning of my career was the best thing I could have ever done.

Nothing can teach you what it's like to work on a film set, and the best education there can be for an actor is to walk up the street and observe human nature.

To be a good actor you have to be something like a criminal, to be willing to break the rules to strive for something new.

I don't think film actors need training, really.

I thought acting was all about natural instinct but I've realised, through working with so many talented actors on 'Wild Swans' and 'Run,' that I can see the training. That's why I am back at drama school.

Acting classes, I guess, are good and I would like to maybe sometime take one. But I would feel like I was learning someone else's technique. I like mine.