Quotes About Performance

Be the person I'm playing. That's what acting is. You're pretending to be someone else.

The whole thing's illusion, [Jacob], and there's nothing wrong with that. It's what people want from us. It's what they expect.

I love watching amazing actors and actresses that you can't take your eyes off of because everything they are doing - even if it is just twiddling their thumbs or scratching their eye - it's just interesting.

That other girl who was going to play Kate? God rest her soul, but she was god-awful.

When you fake emotion for a living, when you make your money providing fantasies for other people, tuning into their worlds and indulging them, you don't invite someone into your world very easily.

Being able to read well in public and talk about your work in an engaging fashion is part of most writers' job specification.

Musicians are the worst – they're charming if you're lucky but they ain't steady.

The idea behind reciting a creed is reasonably simple. If you do not say the right lines, you may not be in the right story. For example, if you don't hear the lines, "To be or not to be, that is the question," chances are you are not watching a performance of Hamlet. —RICHARD A. LISCHER19

The truth, the absolute truth, is that the chief beauty for the theatre consists in fine bodily proportions.

For the theatre one needs long arms; it is better to have them too long than too short. An artiste with short arms can never, never make a fine gesture.

The theatre is the involuntary reflex of the ideas of the crowd.

Once the curtain is raised, the actor ceases to belong to himself. He belongs to his character, to his author, to his public.

The artist's personality must be left in his dressing-room; his soul must be denuded of its own sensations and clothed with the base or noble qualities he is called upon to exhibit ... must leave behind him the cares and vexations of life, throw aside his personality for several hours, and move in the dream of another life, forgetting everything.

SARAH BERNHARDT

Yes, I have met with unsympathetic audiences in my time, but I don't know that an unsympathetic audience has much effect on me. I am not sure that I don't rather enjoy it for a change, for it is then a battle between me and them, and I always win.

The only time a juggler / Appeals to me / Is when I see him / Miss the ball.

Although I'm a lead guitarist, I'd say that a good 95 percent of my time onstage is spent playing rhythm.

It's a tough thing-you get in a situation where you feel you have to be perfect all the time and it sucks.

Acting is the only time when I truly maintain the spontaneity that I want to be present at all times.

Experts say you can't concentrate on more than one task at a time.

Maybe my way of communicating through sign made me more in tune with my body and how it moved. Who knows? I just know when I saw a stage for the first time, I wanted to be on it.

When you add up the minutes you spend actually making a movie - the amount of time you spend actually doing your thing in front of a camera - it just isn't that much. But it's everything.

Sometimes I think the choir gets a little ticked with me because I haven't sung in a long time and I can sing

That was the first time I saw a horse start from a kneeling position!