Quotes About Acting

I can express the brooding part of myself on-screen. It's kind of fun to get to do the bratty things I really wouldn't do. And then I get to go back to my regular life.

I don't usually see my type for on-camera stuff as a series regular. Normally, my type is the janitor, the secretary, the cop, or the nurse.

In feature films, I used to be the hero's friend, a regular character. In short films, I played the hero; I got roles where I could work on my character and performance. They made me aware of myself as an actor.

Every experience I've had with 'Power' has been so great, so to become a series regular was fantastic.

I've played a lot of cops and a lot of bad guys, so I would like to play a regular person and just live a regular life with something interesting about it. I love the idea of television and kind of infiltrating that.

I am just like any regular person. I am a fun-loving guy, which is reflected in my acting. I love to spend time with my family like any other person.

I never dreamed that shooting a film would be so hard. There was less regulation then of child actors' hours. Even the concept of acting confused me.

The great thing about doing a play is you get this rehearsal period, which you don't get with most film and television roles.

I would rather play Hamlet with no rehearsal than TV golf.

Rehearsal for film is tough. Until the camera's there, everything changes.

You never learn to act in front of a camera. You never learn anything in front of a camera. But you learn to act in a rehearsal room with a good play and a good cast and a good director.

I prefer film to the stage. I always like the rehearsal better than I like performing.

I've been onstage once for one performance with four days' rehearsal.

It's a hard thing to do, to be given a script, and know that you've got to turn up on the first day of the shoot - generally without having had any rehearsal - and present a character. It's really baffling; it's incredibly hard to know how to begin, to approach it, other than just thinking about it.

You might have, as a character, 30 pages of dialogue a day if you're what they call a 'front-burner story.' So you go home, you learn your lines for the next day, you get up, you're there at 7 in the morning, you do a quick rehearsal, you're on camera, you might leave, you know, at 7 at night and start the whole thing over again.

We rehearsed our 'Scarface' to the nines. Long period of rehearsal, so that by the time we started to shoot, it was almost like doing a play. We all had a grand time doing it. It was a wonderful cast.

I learned to understand the distance a character can be from yourself and how important rehearsal can be to creating a person that feels like a person that isn't you.

I was very lucky: I started acting in this highly subsidized German theater world, so there was not so much job insecurity. We had great working conditions, long rehearsal times, well paid.

The only thing that made its way to actually happen for me was acting. I love it, and I love being on set. I love being in rehearsal for things and telling stories. It's what I feel I am supposed to be doing.

You have to run, an awful lot, on instinct. Even on 'Veep,' it's not like you get weeks of rehearsal to break out what's going on in the scenes.

Rehearsals are set up so that you find out all the nuances about your character. You never want to beat yourself up. It's about finding the right direction, and most of the time, the right direction is not what you think is the right direction. That's why the director's there: to guide you there.

I think that sometimes in theater, I don't prepare much beyond going to the rehearsals.

I never imagined I'd go into acting, but I always loved drama, and when I was 16, I discovered the Library Theatre up the road. So I plucked up courage and asked if I could watch rehearsals. It was like Heaven.

When I first started acting in college, at Cal, the thing that I loved about acting was not being onstage but going into rehearsals. The thing, as I look back on it now, that I was most attracted to, was that I felt like I'd found my family. It was just a bunch of loonies.