Silent Performance Quotes

Create, artist, do not talk.

Words can be deceitful, but pantomime necessarily is simple, clear and direct

I'm happy in a silent world - well, not a silent world but one that relies on - I'm in a pretty physical actor I suppose anyway, and I just don't - I don't struggle that idea of emotional expression just because there aren't words to explain yourself.

Mime is an art beyond words. It is the art of the essential. And you cannot lie. You have to show the truth.

One sign of a great actor is when he can be alone by himself on the screen, doing almost nothing, and producing one of a film's defining moments.

I don't like to act because my life is a pantomime anyway.

I looked at early movies with Robert Redford, and I like how Robert, even though he had that automatic charisma and was a very verbal person, he always played those more silent characters and played within the scene and never overacted.

When you're in a play, 50 percent is the genius of the actor, 50 percent is the genius of the author. When a mime is not perfect, you see nothing.

Even the finest actors will have great difficulty showing somebody's loneliness. To put an actor on a chair and ask him to do nothing and yet tell the viewer everything about the character, it's a difficult task.

Never get a mime talking. He won't stop.

People strangely revere dance. They see it as another world, and dancers are somehow mysterious - just because they don't speak.

Sometimes I wish I hadn't said something foolish. It is then that I realize the power of mime.

If an actor only comes alive when he has lines to say, it doesn't work, and the same goes for illustrated characters.

I remember seeing the performance Samantha Morton did in 'Sweet and Low Down' where she didn't speak at all, and I loved it so much because she got to do so much work just by expressing herself in her body and her face. With expressions, it wasn't necessary to speak. I find that appealing.

It's a good challenge as an actor to express feelings without saying too many words.

That's one of the most important things about acting is not just when you're speaking but when you're taking in from someone else. So I often go to the theater and I'm watching the person who's not talking. I love that.

As an actor, you have many tools - your body, your voice, your emotions, mentally. In film, you have your eyes because they communicate your thought process. In fact, generally in film, what you don't say is more important than what you say. That's not so much the case for stage.

There is only one Marceau.

I ask my assistants if they're retarded all the time. When the camera is on you, of course, actors have the ability to make it real. For me, if I'm not talking, it is a problem. I have so much more respect for actors after being in front of the camera, and I realize that the hardest part is when you're not talking. Listening is harder than just acting. Listening is the hardest part.

I turned my thoughts to a still more novel mode... to compose pictures on canvas similar to representations on the stage... my picture is my stage, and men and women my players exhibited in a 'dumb' show.

Reading is performance. The reader--the child under the blanket with a flashlight, the woman at the kitchen table, the man at the library desk--performs the work. The performance is silent. The readers hear the sounds of the words and the beat of the sentences only in their inner ear. Silent drummers on noiseless drums. An amazing performance in an amazing theater.

All my concerts had no sounds in them; they were completely silent. People had to make up their own music in their minds!

I have done 'Gutar-Gu,' which was a silent comedy show.

Now, what does an actor who can't talk do? Wait for silent pictures to come back?

I took a couple of classes in clowning, but that was more like Lucille Ball kind of slapstick, not Ringling Brothers. But we had to do things silently, and the teacher would do this running commentary. 'Does this make Clown sad? Oh, Clown doesn't like that, does Clown?' Always 'Clown.' Never a name.