Quotes About Performance

If I enter a set, I am all over the place and be in my zone once the camera is on.

We played ten packed-out shows at the Kremlin in just seven days and only discovered later that everyone in the crowd for the first three nights was a politician. They had all come from the nine Soviet time zones just to see us.

There's only a certain percentage of the strike zone that you can do extra-base hit, barrel damage with the ball. Just because it's in the strike zone doesn't mean you have to take a cut at it.

But every time the crowd boo me I try to turn that negative into a positive and seem to have done that better. Sometimes it drives me to play better and concentrate more when theyre booing. Sometimes when theyre not on my back, I cant get in the zone.

For actors in Hollywood, it's very straightforward. We're well-paid animals in a zoo.

Laurie Anderson

As an actor, to go and see those shows - great plays like 'Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?' and Clifford Odets's 'Golden Boy' - it's so exhilarating. I'd personally love to perform the role of Jerry in Edward Albee's 'The Zoo Story.' He's a transient, lost soul, and an example of humanity at its rawest.

With me, traveling for work is arriving at the airport, checking into the hotel, leaving the hotel the next morning at 4 or 5 to do something like 'The Jimmy and Jackie Captain Crazy Morning Zoo,' doing a bunch of those in a row, then going back to the hotel, and then finally going to the club.

The thing that I don't like is the selfie when people turn their back to the stage. I'm playing my heart out, I put everything that I have into my performance. If someone turns their back to me like a zoo animal... that drives me absolutely bananas.

A walking shadow, a poor player, that struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more.

In music, the punctuation is absolutely strict, the bars and the rests are absolutely defined. But our punctuation cannot be quite strict because we have to relate it to the audience. In other words, we are continually changing the score.

The play was a great success, but the audience was a disaster.

There are some great roles - mostly in Shakespeare's tragedies which no one can play at full strength from beginning to end. One simply hopes that one can hit the peaks as often as one has the strength.

Acting is not being emotional, but being able to express emotion.

A good actor must never be in love with anyone but himself.

Actors are the only honest hypocrites.

With the collapse of vaudeville new talent has no place to stink.

The real actor - like any real artistj- has a direct line to the collective heart.

The best actors do not let the wheels show.

Many plays, certainly mine, are like blank cheques. The actors and directors put their own signatures on them.

You need three things in the theatre - the play, the actors and the audience and each must give something.

The whole motivation for any performer is 'Look at me, Ma.'

If you give audiences a chance they'll do half your acting for you.

Show business is like sex. When it's wonderful, it's wonderful. But when it isn't very good, it's still all right.