Rehearsal Strategies Quotes

Karl Malden was quite a mentor. He taught me things he had learned from being in front of a camera so long.

I've been to acting coaches and everything, but they had to open me up and all that, so now I'm getting better with it.

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.

My ambition is to get better as an actor.

I spent a lot of time developing my chops when I was younger. In doing so, I found that one of the hardest things was dealing with what to practice.

I think rehearsal can be important if it's done in a way that works. Often, rehearsal can be a waste of time.

I don't offer advice to actors only because I've seen actors become successful through ways that would never even occur to me or that wouldn't work for me. But this has worked for me: Never memorizing a scene.

I just want to be a better actor. You can always get better.

Just getting auditions was rough. But also just learning how to act - when I did my first role, in a film I did which was a favour to a friend, I realised I was really bad at it.

A couple days before the stunts, if I'm doing something particularly dangerous, I will go over every worst-case scenario in my head, like this could happen, this could happen, this could happen, this could happen. I try to think about that to where it's ingrained in me.

I can't see how I'd learn to be a better actor from reading reviews.

All the real work is done in the rehearsal period.

One of the things I learned very early on is you need to cast the kids for the characters you want them to play. They need to be who they are, right? If you want a loud, boisterous kid character, you need to find that kid.

There is a lot of hype about drama school, I think.

Two pieces of advice for young composers: Go away during technical rehearsals. And do not have a back operation.

If you're a comic, you don't have a rehearsal room; you rehearse on stage. My main concern is remembering everything. I've written lots of material, but how do you memorise 90 minutes? That's one hell of a long speech. I've always had problems with that.

Two, I actually learned a lot of things that served me very well when it came to repeating performances on stage, because it is a craft and you do need a technique for it.

My most useful acting tip came from my pal John Wayne. Talk low, talk slow, and don't say too much.

One of the most important elements in teaching, conducting, and performing, all three, is listening.

When an actor comes to me and wants to discuss his character, I say, 'It's in the script.' If he says, 'But what's my motivation?, ' I say, 'Your salary.'

I guess once you've been acting for a long time, you glean the great bits of good directors and the bad bits from other directors, and you know the way that you would like to be directed.

Conducting is a strange thing to teach. There are very few great conducting teachers, and most great conductors don't teach. Look at Valery Gergiev - what he does is not teachable. A lot of it is on-the-job training, what works and what doesn't work.

As an actress, I'm constantly watching different shows and films and am always gathering information and inspiration for characters and techniques to make my performances the best they can be.

I think that's part of acting - to still get nervous and control that fear. I don't know how to get rid of that.

As an actress, you have to keep yourself fresh and new.