Reactive Performance Quotes

You can do a whole scene in acting without ever checking in to what the other guy is saying - it's not going to come off great, but you can get through the scene - whereas in improv, that's gonna be impossible.

The crowd is the crowd. You're gonna take them as an individual performer how you take them. The key is how do you learn from them. How do you use whatever is happening reaction-wise to get better.

I'm the sort of actor who doesn't really prep a lot - I don't do a lot of research for parts. I just go for it, and I usually pull through.

I don't separate Robert DeNiro's comedy from the serious stuff. The one thing I realize working with him in all of his work, is that he doesn't do anything unless something happens to him in scenes - unless something happens to make him react. He never came in with a set idea of how he was going to do it, he never came in with guns blazing. He would just show up and wait to see what happened.

I have worked alone and with a cast and enjoy the process both ways. There is more back-and-forth with a full cast, and you can feed off the other actors' performance.

I don't like to rehearse, and the film-makers that I have been drawn to are interested in provoking something between people rather than nailing a scene in advance.

No matter where I go, I never write the setlist until I'm at the venue.

Feeling and reacting has more impact than just trying to emote what your character's saying.

'Eastbound & Down' is giving you a rhythm. It's just a whole different vibe with improv. As an actor I just kind of exercise within my environment and adjust depending on where I'm at.

Scenes change all the time. Scenes will change while you're shooting them, and you just have to roll with it 'cause that's what makes it funny. It's not being stuck in your character and how you're gonna do something, but to react to other people and to really have a real-life conversation.

Oliver Stone's strategy is to unnerve the actors so as to make them alert and alive.

I feel any actor can deliver a dialogue but real acting is how one reacts to the dialogue.

The best actors instinctively feel out what the other actors need, and they just accommodate it.

Acting is all about relating to the people on stage with you, even in plays that break the fourth wall. Clowning, for the most part, is the opposite. If somebody in the audience sneezes, I can count on it: I don't even have to look at Shiner; he'll have his handkerchief out. It's all about all of us in the room together.

I don't want to make decisions about what I'm going to do before I'm doing it because I base my acting off my partner and off the other people in the scene.

As an actor, I've been taught to just stay with your scene partner, and whatever they do, let it affect you, be spontaneous.

That's what's so satisfying about acting. You can come as prepared as you like, but there's no accounting for what's going to come at you from the other actor. That's part of the joy and the play of it. If you don't have that it's a different kind of performance.

The good thing about having chemistry is, when you get to the improv section of a scene, you've got somebody to feed off. It can go on and on and on, and the sky's the limit.

Acting is nothing but reacting, so if your co-stars react in a particular way, it does affect your acting as well.