Quotes About Acting

For me, the challenge of a period film is that, unlike a contemporary film where the character can be very free-form when it comes to the acting, there's a burden to acting in a period film because you have to stay within the character's historical background and the gestures of certain periods.

As far as playing different characters within the character, I think that's fun. Very rarely, on TV, do you get to do that on such a regular basis.

It can be very thrilling being able to witness Viola Davis do her thing for hours and hours, but there are also no windows, and you're just in a room for fourteen hours trying to keep it together.

I resent having witnessed the survival of some very mediocre male actors and the professional demise of the very brilliant female ones.

Stephen Sondheim is calculus for actors. The words are witty and brilliant and profound but complicated.

We started by playing girls who only married at the end of the picture. We didn't play wives. That came later. But the most dreadful thing was when a star had to play a mother. That was the beginning of her professional end.

The first play I did was a funny one called 'The School for Wives', by Moliere. We were wearing the ugliest wigs and the worst costumes you can ever imagine to try to recreate 17th-century France in Singapore. But I got my first real pay cheque from that. I was very happy taking that cheque to the bank.

I did 'Footballer's Wives' for two-and-a-half seasons and I asked to be written out.

My first professional acting role was a small part in a television series called 'The Wizard.' I later had the opportunity to work on Michael Jackson's Moon-walker music video.

We are not what we seem. We are more than what we seem. The actor knows that. And because the actor knows that hidden inside himself there's a wizard and a king, he also knows that when he's playing himself in his daily life, he's playing a part, he's performing, just as he's performing when he plays a part on stage.

After The Wizard Of Oz I was typecast as a lion, and there aren't all that many parts for lions.

I began acting on stage when I was 7 years old. My first role was as Dorothy in 'The Wizard of Oz' at Chicago's Center on Deafness in Northbrook, Illinois.

I started acting as a child in Community Theatre but I didn't do any serious stuff. It was all musicals like 'Annie' and 'Wizard of Oz.' I was always in the chorus.

I've been acting since I was 8 - I used to play hockey and there was a kids' theatre down the street from my house and one day I just walked in and signed up for auditions for 'The Wizard Of Oz.'

I played Dorothy in 'The Wizard of Oz.' That was my first role on stage.

I did the 'Wizard of Oz' in third grade, and I was a witch.

When I was a senior, I did my senior class play, and that was pretty much it... It was 'The Wizard of Oz,' and I was Dorothy.

I don't think there's a part that I've played or something I've written or directed that hasn't smacked of 'The Wizard Of Oz.' It's the film all roads lead to for me.

When I was playing Gandalf, I didn't think, 'Oh my dear, I'm playing a 7,000 year old wizard,' because I've never met one, and I don't know what they're like.

I've wanted to act since I was seven. The year before, I'd been a munchkin in 'The Wizard of Oz' and was overcome with terror. The next year I just watched. My sister was in 'The Little Mermaid' and I had this deep knowing that I needed to be there on stage, not in the audience.

I learned mime back when I was in college, at Ball State University, Indiana. That woke up my body from the neck down and made me realize that acting and communication - portraying a story, event, or emotion - is a full-body experience.

Strangely, when I was a kid, my first acting job, at 5 years old, was a performance of 'The Three Little Pigs.' They cast me as the Big Bad Wolf.

Dick Wolf was my first boss after coming out of Sarah Lawrence.

I got the acting bug really young, when I was around, like, 10. I pretty much just wanted to be Michael J. Fox. He was in 'Teen Wolf' - that was, like, the coolest role, and then he did 'Back to the Future,' and that was the coolest role.