The process of acting is no different [playing human or ape]. You're embodying the character. You're creating the psychology and the physicality. You're living the moment.
It is open to question whether the highly individualized characters we find in Shakespeare are perhaps not detrimental to the dramatic effect. The human being disappears to the same degree as the individual emerges.
I think that it's important not to take [acting] too seriously. It's all pretend. It's a strange job.
Actors are the only honest hypocrites.
I remember when people said, "Man, that's a powerful scene in the movie!" and I was like, "We just shot this thing before lunch, I don't know, he tears a log apart, I said some words".
I think acting is an important profession, because acting can give you pleasure and can teach you at the same time, and that is a good thing.
I enjoy acting when you really hit it right. And I guess I've always had too much fantasy to be only a housewife.
All the world's indeed a stage And we are merely players Performers and portrayers Each another's audience outside the gilded cage
Action is pretty boring to do as an actor. Action and sex scenes are silly because it's all faking.
Now what else is the whole life of mortals, but a sort of comedy in which the various actors, disguised by various costumes and masks, walk on and play each ones part until the manager walks them off the stage?
Even when I was on Curb Your Enthusiasm I wasn't this "over-the-top" crazy character. It was still kind of play it straight but it was funny because the situation was funny. That's kind of how I portrayed things and I like dramas; I like to be able to - because in dramas you can laugh and joke and still be serious, be real. I like the realism of them.
As long as movies are depressing, life isn't.
If you're going to play a brain surgeon, you just have to learn how to say the words. You don't have to go and learn how to cut open somebody's scalp. I think acting is acting. Being is something else.
Exaggeration, the inseparable companion of greatness.
I love directing Shakespeare on film. It's fantastic that the actors would do exactly the same thing and be true to their part.
It was the first time I worked with Matthew McConaughey [in the True Detective].They're fun guys [with Woody Harrelson]. They don't take life at all too seriously, but yet they take their work very seriously. And both of them are just so committed to character and the story.
I would love to do a drama. I did a couple of episodes of The Good Wife, which is more of a drama. I really liked that; I thought it was interesting. A lot of my favorite comedies play out as dramas.
In tragedy great men are more truly great than in history. We see them only in the crises which unfold them.
People tend to think when you're on dramatic films, that it's all so heavy, but it's really not when you're working with great actors.
I've always wanted to do all kinds of roles, dramatic roles and comedic roles, all kinds of roles.
[On Katharine Hepburn's stage performance:] She ran the whole gamut of emotions, from A to B.
If he were on fire, he couldn't act as if he were burning. He can't out-act me on the big screen.
'Trumbo' is conventional in its structure, mixing interviews with archival footage. What I enjoyed most about the film was its liberal use of his own personal letters to friends and family, performed dramatically by well-known actors.
I may not be a great actress but I've become the greatest at screen orgasms. Ten seconds of heavy breathing, roll your head from side to side, simulate a slight asthma attack and die a little.
A picture should be a re-creation of an event rather than an illustration of an object; but there is no tension in the picture unless there is a struggle with the object.
