Overacting Quotes

If I get two lines in the script, I somehow turn it into 20. I've got a bit of a bad habit of doing that, of just embellishing my little moment.

I thought acting was showboating.

For me, there's a fine line between being a cheeseball and being a good performer.

When I was starting out, doing guest spots on TV, and even commercials, I would go in with a whole crazy wardrobe and some terrible accent. Obviously, I was doing too much. If you bring too much flavor to it, it's absurd. There's something to just being spontaneous.

I think when someone who's known for doing drama does a comedy but just tries to be funny, that's a mistake.

I always laugh a lot when I see the dramas that I end up doing. I see myself behaving very seriously and I'm like, 'What is this?'

Acting is all about big hair and funny props... All the great actors knew it. Olivier knew it, Brando knew it.

I have a tendency to evolve into William Shatner, with my big fat face.

Crying does not equal good acting.

I am not that big a method actor.

If there is a streak of ham anywhere in an actor, Shakespeare will bring it out.

A lot of people tend to chew up the scenery. I'm a firm believer in less is more, especially on the big screen.

My first job was television. I got to where I wanted to go, but through a little bit of a detour. When I first started working in film and television, I hated myself - I didn't like what I was doing at all. All I could think of was, 'I'm overacting. Be smaller.' I started to do that, but that was not fun. I felt confined doing film and TV.

Showing fear is like having comedic timing because I think actors have a tendency to go way over the top with it, and that sort of loses steam for what's going on. The audience sees right through that and laughs at you, so it is something that I'm aware of.

Some actors get by with behaving, not acting. You've got to sell the effect. I act more in the 'Nightmare' movies because it's not like me. I'm acting, not reacting.

On the whole, actors shout when they don't know what they're doing, trying to make an impact.

It's very hard to dramatise something factual and not make it look overdone, but also not to make it look so under-dramatised that it's dull.

Luckily, neither in my Tamil nor in my Telugu movies do I have roles that require exaggerated emoting.

If you do too much acting in a lead part in a feature film where you're 40 ft. high, it's rather unattractive. You can see the acting. And it's actually the right thing to do to bring as much of yourself, I believe, to the part as you possibly can - to minimize the amount of theatrical stuff that you need to do.

I love drama - mum calls me a Drama Queen!

When I tell people that I am acting in Telugu, they ask me if I have to overact.

Acting is a challenge at times. I mean, when you have scenes where you're jumping into a mascot bear to travel back in time, and you try to make that seem real. For me, I'm a person that has a pretty wild imagination, just kind of letting that run wild and sort of just doing the best you can to not feel stupid.

Most Hindi movies tend to dramatise events. They are very dialogue heavy. Characters don't speak like people normally do in real life.

My father and my uncle used to be amateur monologuists because their generation grew up with Henry Irving and the like, and they had that style of delivery, of declamation: 'The Belllllls!' What we call 'ham' now, larger than life.

Overacting is a self-indulgence, while underacting comes either through a lack of talent or a lack of courage.