Acting Tools Quotes

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.

'Girls' was my first audition. I'd just taken an audition class, and I was excited to implement those tools.

I like doing everything - theater and film, radio and TV, comedy and tragedy. I love it all. And I've never really planned anything - I've always looked at my job in a rather simplistic way. It's like being a plumber. One day you might be fixing an early 20th century showerhead that requires real detailed work. The other day you might just be clearing a sewer. Both jobs are very different, but all the tools come out of the same box. That's the way I look at acting.

You have to teach yourself to act but Michael Chekhov will give you the necessary tools - and for me, Psychological Gesture and Centers are extremely valuable They work like a charm. I've used them all along and still do.

Voice acting is very different from live-action. You only have one tool to convey emotion. You can't sell a line with a look. It's all about your vocal instrument. Doing voice work is also great because you don't have to get your hair done, which I despise.

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.

One of the great tools we use in acting is the idea of immediacy, that the audience gets to see you witness something apparently for the first time, so you create a lot of tools to kind of trick yourself into making it appear something is happening for the first time.

Characters that are not the norm or a bit out of the ordinary are always a challenge as an actress. You learn more by using different tools for those type of characters. They are always much more fun to play and much more interesting. They take you places that you wouldn't necessarily go in your everyday life.

The more you have in your toolbox, if you can visualize or have a moment to provide you a visual, as an actor, that's paramount.