Performance Challenges Quotes

If you're stuck at piano and you're not a lead guitarist or a lead vocalist, you're kind of at a nine-foot plank then and you should do something about it.

The movies that I've done in the past, everybody's been like, 'Cam always gets away in a movie playing Cam.' So, like, I'm trying to step outside the box a little bit just to show my range in acting.

I think it's really important whilst you're a young actor to try as many new things as possible... to try and do something you haven't necessarily been seen doing before.

Sometimes supporting is difficult because a lot of people go to a gig to see the main act and to have a beer and a chat with their mates, so a lot of the time, even if you were John Lennon, would not listen to you.

I have been up and down the batting order and it's difficult. People don't always realise that.

When it is good, theatre takes a lot of beating both to watch and perform.

Some people don't like competition because it makes them work harder, better.

As an actor, I would call it a role where you get to stretch out a bit.

An awful lot of actors shy away from the uglier aspects of the human condition. They want to be liked, which is a cop-out. You've got to go for it.

Honestly, I'm willing to experiment with far more variety in roles than I'm given. But ultimately, it's the producer's decision. But, I've done a variety of roles - the evil don, the evil husband... I've done villainous roles, supporting roles, etc.

Singing and playing live can be difficult. Like, in the studio, I would record either the music track first or the vocal first. I don't necessarily do them together.

Sometimes I'll go out into the crowd and keep singing, but I'll get maybe seven rows out and I'm out of synch, I'm a couple seconds behind the band and then it becomes chaos.

You're always going to have ups and downs - if you look at the careers of a whole bunch of people I respect, some of them have good movies, some of them have bad movies. I remember Andrew Garfield said that the only power we really have as actors - or one of the main powers we have as actors - is our choices. We can make interesting choices, but as soon as you've made that choice, so much else is in play: the director, the script can change, the other actors. All you can do is try to make interesting choices and, once you're in it, just do the best you can.

Obviously neither 'American Idol' nor 'Dancing With the Stars' is a variety show in the classic sense, but the way they incorporate elements of drama, comedy and suspense is moderately ingenious.

When you're doing those operation scenes, you not only have to be on top of the dialogue and the rhythm of the dialogue and what's happening dramatically, but you've got to technically get the rhythm right, so that everything is fitting with the dialogue at the right time. And you're performing the operation to the audience that's watching it. Thackery has to present it, as well. In some ways, that's the most challenging.

You do have habits and rhythms that you do sort of fall into when you're acting, but if you've got text that doesn't allow you to do that it puts you in a bit of an uncomfortable space and takes you out of your habits.

I left the studio at 5:30 in the morning. It's an incredible mind exercise. You have to, obviously, have stamina, but you really feel like you're kind of feeding your mind. It's a challenge of learning lines very fast and then you have to be lose enough to hopefully make good choices in a much shorter amount of time that it takes to film certain scenes.

A lot of the time, as an actor, you don't have the freedom to change what your lines are, and they can often be very unnatural or difficult to portray in a real light.

Honestly, I think we in the WWE are very underrated as performers. What we do would be very difficult for even an experienced actor. To go out and sometimes have 15 minutes of verbiage, sometimes have to ad-lib and then, of course, have other variables such as the interaction with the audience, it can be challenging.

Just coming to terms with the fact that I got to play April Wheeler [Revolutionary Road] and Hanna Schmitz [The Reader] in one year, let alone in my lifetime. I'm very, very aware of how rare that is as an opportunity for any one person. I can't tell you how much I've been able to take away from these experiences creatively. I really, really learned so much about acting, about myself... all of those things. It's difficult to talk about the actor's process without sounding like an arrogant asshole but they really were very challenging.

I have always felt that acting in a film is very challenging in itself. But when it comes to performing live, I think that is more challenging.

When you're on the set, and sometimes, because it's been so complex and the writers have been really writing, sometimes up until the last minute... And you kind of sit back; you separate yourself from your brain, and you say, let me see if you can do this. And that's the kind of challenge I like.

Doing these movies I've done with WWE, it's a different pace. It's a lot of hurry up and wait, a lot of sitting around and like the day of the pay-per-view, when you're thinking about what you can do, and then you get the payoff, the reward, that night. It's just a different animal.

The toughest nights when I was a young, unknown comedian were opening for these real old-time Italian singers. I'm like Grace Jones to them. "This guy is nuts-talking about socks. Where's the wife jokes, where's the fat jokes?"

As an actor, if I just did sci-fi, I think it would get limiting, like if you just play lawyers or doctors, over and over. It's a lot more fun, if you get to play lots of different types of characters.