Quotes About Performance

When the heroes go off the stage, the clowns come on.

The cultivated man, wise to know and bold to perform, is the end to which nature works.

A comedian is a fellow who finds other comedians too humorous to mention.

The role of a comedian is to make the audience laugh, at a minimum of once every fifteen seconds.

As an actor, the only pressure I have is to just be truthful and to do my best work.

If we're in a scene together, I want to give you something that allows your performance to be truthful. In football, if you're opposite me, I want to destroy you, take your head off. I'm still reading body language, still reacting, still trusting my instincts - same as football - but it's different now.

You have to be truthful and believable in whatever you do and that is the founding principle of acting.

Your average director will be content with something that comes across as truthful, but we know, as fellow actors, that that's not great for a performer. They have to feel that what they're conveying is honest.

Depending on who's directing you, sometime it's heightened or more naturalistic, but generally you're trying to represent something truthful.

There are certain roles - say, terrorist roles - that if I don't feel like it's something truthful, I'm not going to do it.

As an actor, I believe that acting is actually behaving truthfully under imaginary circumstances.

Doing a scene truthfully is very similar to doing a song truthfully. They're really parallel.

And you know, whether it's drama or comedy, the best work is based on truth. It's just that, with comedy, the circumstances are just crazy-heightened, and you have these crazy things thrown at you. But you still have to do it truthfully, because that's where the humor comes from. So it's not that difficult to cross over.

You want to be honest with a character and play it truthfully, and you want to be genuine with your character.

The actor's job is to put themselves in the shoes of the character they are trying to portray as truthfully as possible.

Creating a character and living truthfully through her is a whole different ball game. It's all part of the same person but it's a much newer medium for me.

That suspension of disbelief that's required as an actor to live truthfully in imaginary circumstances is different to what needs to happen as a director, in the sense that you are the master of all the moving parts. You create the world in every detail.

I take bits and pieces from everything. But I think the Method can be very isolating, and sometimes it's more about ego than playing the character truthfully.

Truthfully, you're not your audience, so all that self-consciousness and all that - it gets in the way of you actually just being the best thing in whatever thing that you're doing.

I've never been obsessed by how I looked. In fact, I would rather have looked more ordinary so I could play more parts more truthfully.

I think 'Hand to God' is going to change the landscape of Broadway. I think Broadway, truthfully, will never be the same.

It's just that, with comedy, the circumstances are just crazy-heightened, and you have these crazy things thrown at you. But you still have to do it truthfully, because that's where the humor comes from.

There's always going to be a part of me that wants an Emmy. Truthfully, I'm probably more motivated by people being entertained. I'm more motivated by people being like, 'Oh snap! Did you see that?'

My only job is to act and play the character truthfully and honestly.