Quotes About Performance

To be an actor is to be ambiguous in every form, which is a very hard way to live. You represent desire: the desire of the director and the desire of the audience, even if it's a subconscious desire. If a director is to work with you for two months, he must be in love with you in some way or another.

For me, when I grew up playing music, I played music in church and people were shouting and having a big time, and church wasn't something where it was subdued. If you played something, you brought it to church with you.

When you act, you've got to be like a poet or a musician. It's not about evidence before court. It's not a forensic subject. It's poetry; it's a completely different place.

I did a film, 'X+Y', in which I played somebody on the autistic spectrum. It's a subject I didn't know very much about, but being an actor gives yourself the opportunity to really immerse yourself in that world and learn things. It's one of the great things about what I do.

Sometimes it's difficult directing yourself on film because you can't quite separate yourself from the subject.

Conducting! A subject, truly, concerning which much might be written, yet scarcely anything of real importance is to be found in books.

The subject matter of the show, 'Cabaret,' was more than risky. And the emcee I would be playing didn't have a single line of dialogue. Still, it was full of possibilities, and it was mine.

There are roles I want that my agency might not want me to do because of the subject matter or whatever. Or there are roles that people won't bring to me because they don't think I'll do it. And that is a big strain because an actor wants to act.

As an actor, you want new challenges. U.S. TV can be very formulaic. So when something gets a reaction, as 'The Slap' has, that's great. The sense I get is that it's not about me or my performance. More than anything it's the subject matter that people are focused on.'

I know gymnastics. It's always been a subjective appreciation.

Skating is a very subjective sport where fans have their favorites.

It's always weird when it comes to awards and awards season because how can you say that this performance is better than this performance? Art is so subjective.

Your subjective sense of how well you're doing under conditions of sleep deprivation is a miserable predictor of, objectively, how you actually are doing.

The great thing about wrestling is that it's very subjective. They'll let you know what they like and don't like.

I write plays about big, intense subjects.

A lot of the characters I play have problems, they are marginalised, they have serious psychological problems, problems with relationships, with childhood. These are big subjects, big subjects. You can't balk at work like that. As an actor, that's as good as it gets.

It's liberating to perform in another language. There are some subjects I would never talk about in French, where they see me as a public figure, that I talk about in English.

Certain subjects are best done with stars. Certain subjects like 'Alai Payuthe' are done with non-stars. In such films, stars are a burden.

I always looked at the process and the career of being a ballerina as sacred. It's a true gift to have this talent and perform these masterworks; it's sublime.

I don't think, there's no possible way for me, anyway, to play a character that I haven't found some sort of sublime compassion for and I related to Deborah on a way that almost, initially, almost in a way maybe someone in the audience might.

I've been doing everything people like to see: knock people out, and submissions, and go in there to fight.

'Ice Age' felt like stage acting. You'd write a sequence, and sometimes you'd submit pages, but other times, I would actually perform it for the directors and producer in my office.

I really subscribe to the 'look good, feel good' mantra in terms of playing, in terms of getting out there.

For other comics, it's about full-spectrum dominance, being on panel shows and having one-liners and being a good chat show guest and having a good seven minutes you can do on 'Live At The Apollo.' But I really think about these subsequent finished pieces, you know? And they don't always chop up well into one-liners and routines.