Stephen Lang Quotes

Sometimes I think of movie acting as advanced pretend.

As much as I know people love the method and what you can draw out of yourself, a lot of acting is very imaginative.

Everything, I think, about acting is based on imagination.

I run the Actor's Studio on the West Coast, and one of the things I say all the time to the people I teach - many of whom are acting teachers - is that an actor needs to make choices that make him present.

I am an actor and I live in the world of pretend in my working capacity. I live in the world of my imagination.

I see all these people talking about acting as a great spiritual thing. It's not. There's no great mystery to acting. It's a very simple thing to do, but you have to work hard at it. It's about asking questions and using your imagination.

On some level, acting is the art of pretend, and you have to have a highly cultivated sense of imagination. You have to be able to see things that aren't there, no matter what aspect of acting, whether it's green screen, whether it's on stage, whether it's anything else, whether you're working on the radio.

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

And at NYU, I went to the Atlantic Theater Company, and they have two main points. One of them is to always be active in something instead of just feeling it. And the other is figuring out your character.

There are a thousand ways to play any role.

For me, acting is play. It's just play and it's playing make believe really, really well.

Writing and directing might be a red herring, and really I'm just re-examining what it is to act, to do it well and do it properly.

If you want to be an actor, you need to learn how to act first, even in sketch comedy.

I'm an actor. I love to create.

I try to create as many circumstances outside of set that help me fall into character when I get onto set.

To be a good actor you have to feel life and observe life.

I consider myself an actor that tries to have as many tools as possible in the bag. And I think that includes the method, then of course it includes some improv techniques, and includes all kinds of different things, because you never know when you're going to have to work on something and in what way.

A lot of acting techniques are very self-oriented.

I learned how to act working in TV.

As an actor, you create your own ideas.

Your job as an actor is to piece together whatever you've learned in your training, or whatever you have experienced in your life, to piece together a person.

When I first started acting, I knew that you have to learn different skills for different roles.

In acting class, teachers talk about how the 'givens' of a situation help define a character.

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.

I am a proud participant of the Spencer Tracy School of Acting: Know your lines, don't bump into the furniture.