Performance Technique Quotes

I never work from the script. I get the script more or less.

I don't know acting, but I choose good stories and portray emotions according to the story.

I think it's sort of a rite of passage for a British actor to try and get the American accent and have a good crack at doing that.

I'm a task-oriented actor. A pretender. And I try to invent my process anew each time I make a new project. So I frown on any method.

As actors we try to find different sides of ourselves.

Reacting is so important to the craft of acting.

I don't think Peg Bundy was very much like Katey Sagal. Definitely the wardrobe Gemma from Sons of Anarchy wears might be a little more like Katey Sagal. I mean, any time you play anything, there's pieces of yourself that you're kind of elaborating on. I mean, you're using parts of yourself.

I have to be composed; I have to be poised. I have to remember what my first piano teacher told me: 'You do not touch that piano until you are ready and until they are ready to listen to you.

What I mostly do is take the script, analyse the hell out of it, see what's in there, see what kind of person I'm dealing with, and then forget I'm playing a father and just play a person who exemplifies all those things.

I saw several actresses play the part. I did not in fact, as far as I know, do anything that any of the other actresses did. I don't think actresses do that. I think that what we do is we see a role as a role, we don't see it as a person. We look at the role and think, 'What can I, as an actor, bring to that part?

There was only one elective at my college for acting, but thank God for that elective because we had a great teacher who introduced me to the Meisner technique for acting. Once I read that book, I said, 'Wow, if I could do that and have that honest moment on stage, that would be amazing.'

When you're an actor or any kind of artist, you use your life as something to draw from in every experience.

When I prepare for a role, I try to get inside the character's head and understand him.

When I act, I act with my skin.

There's no performance where I never have to think about setting up a phrase or making a technical adjustment while I'm performing.

First, I try to take everything away that doesn't matter to singing. It sounds simplistic, but it works. There is absolute focus on singing: producing sounds and emotions that I have always enjoyed. This is key.

We did a lot of that in drama school: intellectualising and maybe justifying your position. 'I am a thinking actor and I have thought this through' - well, just do it. I much prefer the doing aspect.

One does not play the piano with one's fingers: one plays the piano with one's mind.

Sometimes you'll see people give performances in comedy with an ironic detachment where they'll sort of be remarking on the character from outside of it. They're sort of commenting as they're playing the character. I think it's hard not to do that. I've certainly done that.

In the past, I have not been able to hear myself. I play with feeling so I need to hear what is coming out of the amplifier to inspire me; I don't just play mechanically.

I still approach a scene as one would approach a solo. There's nothing set or pat.

In the theater you rehearse in order to do the performance. And in the movies the rehearsal and the performance are kind of the same thing. You're figuring it out and hopefully the camera is pointed at you when you're doing it.

The trick to acting is not to show off, it's to think the thoughts of the character.

One bites into the brass mouthpiece of his wooden cudgel, and the other blows his cheeks out on a French horn. Do you call that Art?

It's not what you play, it's how you play it.