Sentimentality is the emotional promiscuity of those who have no sentiment.
We actors can't say every line as if it has weight, but what we want to do is be true to the meaning of each line, whatever it is. Even the lines that are throwaway may come back later.
Vulnerability is the core of shame and fear and our struggle for worthiness, but it appears that it's also the birthplace of joy, of creativity, of belonging, of love.
I reveal all of myself. I bring all of myself to my roles. You only see me. You don't see anything else but me. That is who's there. They're manifestations of my own self.
You can't just tell actors, especially young ones, to 'act happy' and expect them to do it. They must in some essential way be happy.
Never pretend to a love which you do not actually feel, for love is not ours to command.
Sentimentality is unearned emotion.
What is so real as the cry of a child? A rabbit's cry may be wilder But it has no soul.
I never considered myself part of rock 'n' roll. My stuff was more adult. It was more difficult for teenagers to relate to; my stuff was filled with more despair than anything you'd associate with rock 'n' roll. Since I couldn't see people dancing, I didn't write jitterbugs or twists. I wrote rhythms that moved me. My style requires pure heart singing.
I am very, very painfully human.
The story of 'Lasers' is my story. I didn't have to look too far to get subject matter for this record; it was stuff that was happening to me.
I wanted to go to a place with my first album that was just to the root, to the heart of emotion, and just unbridled by anything that wasn't truly in my heart.
I've always remembered something Sanford Meisner, my acting teacher, told us. When you create a character, it's like making a chair, except instead of making someting out of wood, you make it out of yourself. That's the actor's craft - using yourself to create a character.
If something's true and sincere, it happens regardless of marketing. The more I talk about it, the more I'm telling people how they should react. And that is an asshole.
What men don't want, in fact what anyone who's any sort of thrill-seeking, intelligent adult doesn't want, is some crushing bore describing their emotions in real time every waking hour.
I don't get a chance to cry that often on film, so I was hoping that talent would come my way, that day. I cheated, I guess, when I just started looking at my technology device - my iPhone - to look at pictures of my kids, before I did the scene where I had to cry. That was a good trick that I found.
The goal isn't to be perfect, but to be authentic!
We're in the business of using real emotions to bring pretend emotions to life.
What we're doing with Band of Brothers is trying to put it into human terms, so it is not just a flickering, black and white myth on a screen, it is a resonant story. I want the audience to recognize themselves in these men. They're not just mythic heroes.
All my work is partly biographical. I mean, 'Crash' was absolutely that, absolutely. But you just wouldn't recognize me in most of those characters. But I was in every single one of those characters in 'Crash,' because those were all fears that I had felt. Things that I had thought in my deepest, darkest heart.
I was someone who was out of control and not to be worked with. It was partly because method acting was a new thing in Hollywood then and Marlon Brando had gotten through and Montgomery Clift had gotten through and James Dean but beyond that there wasn't really anybody.
I always have strong feelings when I'm writing a book. Sometimes when I'm writing a book, I even cry when I'm writing. Once I read a quotation that I thought was very true for me, which is: "No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader."
Everyone is usually screwed up in some way and that is usually where the work comes in - figuring out how to make it believable and make it real to present someone's problems that you don't necessarily actually know anything about.
Ready tears are a sign of treachery, not of grief
I do not trust people who don't love themselves and yet tell me, 'I love you.' There is an African saying which is: Be careful when a naked person offers you a shirt.
