Genuine Performance Quotes

You just have to be yourself and make music you feel from your gut, and hopefully, your audience will respond.

My stand-up is more like how I am in real life. I don't really do a character thing in stand-up. It's just a bunch of sentences that are supposed to be funny.

You can bring truth to anything, whether it's a dance movie or an incredibly poignant indie drama or a really broad comedy. As long as you show up to play, I don't think you can go wrong.

At the end of the day, my sole goal, when I go into any scene, is to try to be as honest as I possibly can, and then everything else is second. The most important thing for me is to just be as honest as I possibly can.

You don't want to go and make something, then go out and do shows, if you're not really into it. You don't want to go out there and make people feel like you're grudging playing them a song. That's a disturbing thought.

The secret to acting is don't act. Be you, with add-ons.

The most important thing you can do as a performer is to be yourself, or be an onstage version of yourself. If you're not being true to yourself, and somebody likes that other version of you, you're kind of stuck.

I'm not playing a comedy. I want to be playing the truth of the moment, and then have the comedy come out.

You put on a face for the public. The face isn't false; it's just another side of you. If it were false, you couldn't last. People want something real and natural, and if they catch you acting, you're dead. It has to look real. In order to look real, it has to be real, and I've always thought of the characters I've played as real people.

I took the easy way, and to an extent I regret that. Still, though, the way we did it was honest. We played it and sang it the way we felt it, and there's a lot to be said for that.

If I have no connection with the character, then it's all fake - it's just blah, blah, blah.

When people see me in something and say, 'That's just you - that's not acting,' it's the best compliment I can get.

I just try to be honest and true to the character and play the part.

You have to be truthful and believable in whatever you do and that is the founding principle of acting.

I think all of us are looking for that which does not admit of bullshit . . . If you tell me you can bench press 450, hell, we'll load up the bar and put you under it. Either you can do it or you can't do it-you can't bullshit. Ultimately, sports are just about as close to what one would call the truth as it is possible to get in this world.

Oh, everything we did was completely organic - from the way we looked to the way we sounded, the way we played - everything.

When you have a lot going on in a scene - whether it be a lot of shots, a lot of coverage, a lot of edits, or just the amount of content - it can cover up a deficit of true feeling. But when you don't have a lot of material to work with, you really have to be sincere with everything. You really have to mean it, because there's nowhere to hide.

You can't fake this music. You might be a great singer or a great musician but, in the need, that's got nothing to do with it. It's how you connect to the songs and to the history behind them.

I try to bring myself to every role. The last thing you want to seem like to other people is a talking head or an actor reading lines.

I don't believe in acting. I think that people in life act, but when you are on the stage or, in my case, also on screen, you have to be true.

In my acting, I have to identify with something in the character. The big tough boy on the side of right - that's me. Simple themes. Same me from the nuances. All I do is sell sincerity and I've been selling the hell out of that ever since I started.

There's always going to be a percentage of the kids out there who want to hear people who can actually play and sing.

The song of the blues, the song of the music, was something a lot of people missed out on. They thought they had to swagger a certain way or bark at the mic, and you don't have to do that.

Al Pacino, De Niro, Daniel Day Lewis - they're the best out there because everything they do comes from a very honest place.

Opera is full of trappings that make us go away from being human. You can't let them do that. You can't walk like you're in an opera! You have to make it real. You have to just be there.