Quotes About Acting

My parents are kind of young, and my dad always listened to rock music and stuff like that, so I sort of grew up around that. As far as acting goes, I didn't really have any major influences because it wasn't really something that I focused on.

My acting teacher in high school was really influential, and we still keep in touch.

As an actor, you want to be able to move your character forward into new ground, but also it's really interesting to go backwards and unpeel those layers and the interesting elements of what your character is and what informs the decisions that you make so that you can have as much meat to work with.

There's something about being in a house with an audience, and having that immediate feedback. I started acting because of that energy; it's what feeds me on stage and informs my choices.

I'm not a pop singer; I'm not a jazz singer. And I know I sing like not a whole lot of people do; I also know that a lot of other people act like I do. And better than I do. But what informs the singing is the acting. They're not separate from each other.

I generally don't feel the need to do more research than is necessary to play the part for me, to inform me.

I think everything within film and TV helps inform every other role, so it's definitely helped my acting, being on the other side of the camera, and it's just given me a whole new appreciation for how hard everybody in the crew works.

I started working when I was 17. After working for seven-eight years, I informed my parents about my acting decision.

I would not want to go back to playing the ingenue.

Frankly, there is no shorter shelf life other than that of a child actor, than that of the ingenue.

In my fantasies, I always wanted to play the ingenue, but in reality, in my bones, I am so used to playing the grandmother that I don't feel safe or even sure that I can do it.

I saw I wasn't an ingenue like Debbie Reynolds.

For me to want to be an actor was an improbable idea. I wasn't beautiful or pretty in any conventional way. I wasn't an ingenue at 22. But I was always certain of it and certain of its power. I felt the power when I went to the theater at 9, 10, 12 and 14.

I love playing an ingenue, and I love doing revivals, and I will continue to do that.

My early acting was ingenue stuff.

I was playing 40-year-old women when I was 20. I didn't get considered for ingenue roles.

I always loved singing, ever since I was a child, and acting is something that always been ingrained in me.

In order to inhabit a character, you've got to embrace and empathise with them.

To play a character is to inhabit the world and the life of that character.

Directing is more comfortable for me because, as an actor, there's always something inherently false. Because I'm not that person.

I feel acting needs professional training. Very few actors are inherently talented.

I used to do theatre in school and college. When I started working on television, only the camera was new. Theatre experience really helps one lose inhibitions.

As an actress I feel that if you start to impose your own inhibitions, then you are not doing your job.

I don't know if I ever realized, initially, that I didn't tic when I was so focused on my acting. I think it was after I had already done it a few years, when I went, 'Hey, interesting that this happens.'