Reid Scott Quotes

Scoring animated films, I have the exact same approach and philosophy as I do for a live action. It's all story- and character-driven. I don't care if it's a mouse or Tom Cruise.

I've been doing this since I was 10 years old, inhabiting different people and playing different roles.

Animation is a fascinating area from an acting point of view because it's not really like anything else because you are only providing a portion of the performance. That's very inspiring and it forces you to do things in a different way - to tell stories through your voice.

The great thing about animation is it's like the radio. I used to do lots of radio when I was a kid, and you get to play parts you would never get to play ordinarily.

That is one of the first things my family, my mother and my grandfather, had taught me about acting: 'Use your eyes!' Not being able to do that physical aspect of it, and having to put it all into your voice? That was a little bit of a challenge.

Originally, I thought, 'Gollum's such a fantastic character, why are you doing him CG? Surely you need to be able to humanise him as much as possible - he's so full of pathos and real emotion.'

Actors are really working with bodies, with their minds, and with their emotions. Feelings, basically. That's what movies are about, going from one feeling to another.

I love the idea of animation just because it removes the actor from the character, and you can be anything. I've been devouring 'Adventure Time' and 'Archer.' I'd love to get my hands dirty on either of those shows.

Definitely in voice-over, you have to be completely uninhibited. More than that, you have to put yourself back into the enjoyment of pretending.

Doing voiceovers is so great because even though many people would think it's just your voice, you really do use all your physicality. I've done everything from playing a butterfly to Alice in Wonderland when she's 10 feet tall, so it allows you to be an actor and build new characters.

One day, I was taken into a room with 25 animators, all working on Sadness. They asked me a lot of questions, and they got something of the way I move into the character.

For me, a film is a film, and I just want to be part of good stories to grow as an actor.

I loved the Scarecrow and the Tin Man and the Lion and you could kind of see the actors' faces in them. It wasn't an entirely new face sculpted around them. What made those characters so human and appealing to me was seeing those great actors underneath there. They weren't lost behind a bunch of appliances.

Comedy and drama are like two different sports; they both require athleticism but they're different.

If an actor only comes alive when he has lines to say, it doesn't work, and the same goes for illustrated characters.

As an actor I can bring the story, the narrative in each performance. If I can't do that, then… might as well give up as an actor, hadn't I?

It's an interesting opportunity to do a long-form character and really have the time to find the nuance over an extended period of time. You can really dig deep.

Listen, acting is not surgery, it's entertainment. You're doing something to hopefully move people, to make them laugh, to transport them. But actors are vulnerable, and the reason we're vulnerable is that we're always trying to recreate human behaviour.

You can't judge a character that you're playing, because then you're fighting against doing what the character's doing.

I wrote stories from the time I was a little girl, but I didn't want to be a writer. I wanted to be an actress. I didn't realize then that it's the same impulse. It's make-believe. It's performance.

I write, but I also act.

Even my great grand-mother did impressions.

'Ugly Betty' has been the most important thing I've ever done, easily. I was able to do more with one character than I can ever imagine doing again - Hilda was hilariously funny and emotionally deep... I really got to showcase what I could do with a character.

I think good acting is always character acting.

Great actors like Willem Dafoe and Ellen Page and Samuel L. Jackson will go and do a videogame, because they understand that storytelling isn't just necessarily about filmmaking.