Quotes About Performance

You always draw on your experiences with live audiences to know how to do comedy on films. You're working for a laugh that may or may not come six months later, but you're working in a vacuum at the time you are doing it.

There's something scary about acting always, because basically you do all this work in a vacuum, and then suddenly there's a lot of money spent making a film, and there's suddenly a camera here, going, 'Right? What are you gonna do?'

When I sit down to write a song, it's a kind of improvisation, but I formalize it a bit to get it into the studio, and when I step up to a microphone, I have a vague idea of what I'm about to do.

As a writer myself, my job has very often been to also write on the job. So you get the script and a vague idea of how the scene might work, and you then add funny words or change the script. I'm not the world's best writer or the world's best actor, but I can do that thing where I can fix - or ruin - fix-slash-ruin, add quirk, add value.

Every night, we put on shows that are deteriorating our bodies' life span... we don't do it for it all to be in vain.

The whole point of being an actor is to get satisfaction out of a role - unless you're just vain about celebrity. You're always looking for the one thing that will surprise you.

As a person I'm perfectly vain, I'm just vainer as an actor about my ability. My acting vanity trumps my human vanity.

I care about being formally physically attractive in my life, and I think that I am quite vain about my performance. I'm just not vain about how I look while I give the performance.

It's a vain craft, acting.

Every woman actress is somewhat vain, and I am, too. You really have to take care of yourself.

As an actress, vanity is your enemy. If you're thinking about how you look, you're not going to give a good performance. Once I realized, 'Hmm, I guess I'm not that vain,' it's like something I wanted to protect. I can't imagine anyone could give the full dynamic performance they're capable of and still be vain.

Actors can be many things - vain, venal, self-serving, obnoxious, bullies - but all of the good ones are great storytellers.

I saw Gosling just kill it in 'Blue Valentine.' I thought he was just amazing at that, and I wouldn't mind maybe doing something like that.

HGH testing is happening in Olympics. The science is there. It is a valid test.

There are certainly valid reasons for taking a company private, and it's also possible that C.E.O.s perform better when monitored by a small number of owners in a private company rather than by the dispersed and often uninterested shareholders of a public corporation.

If golfers know they look good, they will play better. I think that is valid for men and women.

As actors, we tend to usually have some issues with self-esteem and some need for validation, and it takes awhile for that fear of not having a job to go away.

If somebody sings a song that I wrote, I feel like it's a nice point of validation for the song, because it shows that the song is able to stand on its own. I like that.

Well, for me, I don't need validation from no one to tell me what type of player I am or number to tell me throughout the year what type of player I am. It's all about your ability to go out there and just compete.

It really feels good that I am in both the ODI and T20 teams. My first aim is to perform for India. And when that gets appreciated, it is a validation that you have done well.

All good performance pieces have some philosophical validity. That's the difference between mere theater and performance art.

A good actor always sets you straight. If you've written a false moment and thought it was probably pretty great, the actor's gonna show you when he gets to that moment. They're the great test of the validity of the material.

Sometimes I get emotional when I'm doing 'Lonesome Valley' or 'Wildwood Rose.'

But I try to play everything very authentically, even if it is an accented immigrant, Jian Yang, that I play on 'Silicon Valley.'