Performance Control Quotes

My biggest competition is always myself. I mean no disrespect, but I do not look at any of the guys as being my competition for the simple reason that I can't control how they're going to look. I can only control how I look.

We can only control what we do on the pitch and what we do on the training ground.

In the theatre, the actor is in total control. The director wasn't in the house last night, the designer wasn't there, the author's dead. It's just us and the audience.

Every character I've ever played, I always try to take him right to the edge and not allow him to fall over, but directors have a tendency to pull me back a little bit.

When you are relaxed, you can focus a lot more easily than when you are hyper and over-energetic. It's important to be "up" for a competition, but you shouldn't have too much energy, because you might not be able to control it. In competitions, it is important to be able to bring the power and energy you are feeling down to a level that you can control. This comes with practice and experience.

I get to pick so many things as an actor. Also, I'm a good observer of people and their mannerisms.

I love live theater. I get my rocks off by doing stand-up, and I am the only actor. But to show up eight times a week and not have that time for myself; to do someone else's lines? When I work for Wendy Wasserstein or Terrence McNally, Neil Simon or even Shakespeare, I do not have the right to change the lines.

With stand-up, I can have an idea, go down the street to a comedy club and work on it, flesh it out, book a venue, people will come, then film it. I do all that myself; I never have to answer to anybody.

Things like dressing, postures and gestures are under the artiste's control. If I'm performing, my safety is primarily my responsibilityso I shouldn't end up doing anything that would infuriate the audience.

I can only control the way I play.

I found out was, by the rhythm of my chewing, how I chewed fast, slow or what have you, I could tell the audience what my character was thinking and feeling.

I may have given my best performance but what if the role gets edited?

As an actor, you are sort of only in charge of yourself. All you can really control is your performance. You don't know what they're going to do with it in the editing room, what they're going to cut out, which take they're going to use. You know, your control is very limited. As a director, it's ultimately your piece. You have a lot more responsibility, but you also have a lot more creative control. It's scary, but also liberating in a way.

I am not one of those actors who believes he has to live the part he is playing. I can turn it on and off.

Playing a room, it's a real dictator-type situation - you can really move the crowd the way you want to. In a festival, there's a sea of people, and it's harder to lock in on any one group.

My father told me when I first started that standup is exciting and I should pursue it, but that writing would be the thing that would give me power over my career. I never have to take a road gig or a writing gig I don't want because I always have the ability to play one against the other.

I'm not experienced enough, or certain enough of my acting on the screen to say to a director, "You are wrong, I am right. I will only do it this way." I could never feel that, I wish I could be absolutely certain. But on the stage, it's different. I know where I am on the stage.

If you're a movie actor, you're on your own - you cannot control the stage. The director controls it.

With solo shows, you have complete control over the set list. If you feel like you want to do something different or do a new song, you can just work it in. You can talk to the audience or not talk to the audience. There's nothing that's set.

I do Broadway because I refuse to succumb to the stereotypical things that Hollywood does to a performer.

There's so much control of the audience's experience when you're on stage doing a play, whereas when working on camera, there's a lot of people that have to do a lot of things exactly right for anything that I do to matter at all.

Stand-up comedy is mine: it's my entity; it's my brand; I own it. I do it when I want to do it.

I snapped my fingers all through it. Sometimes I set my own tempo during rehearsal by doing that.

It's easier to go from theatre to film than the other way round. In film you're absolutely loved and cossetted and cared for. In film your director makes your performance. In theatre you're carrying it all.

I think directing yourself is a monumental task. Just to self edit as an actor, you work for some directors who don't give you a lot of feedback so you have to do that. That's a difficult thing to do as an actor.