Quotes About Acting

Somewhere during the 'Next to Normal' Broadway run, I found myself learning more about myself onstage than in real life, and I truly realized the beautiful, tremendous, extraordinary gift that is performing.

I think I'm just proudest to be the lady who was asked to play Mary Poppins. She's such a wonderful character, and there's so much tremendous talent out there. So I feel very lucky to be the one who got to play her.

I get the opportunity to play all different ethnicities and not get stereotyped or locked into one. It's been a tremendous advantage, I think.

Authentic discovery, when captured on camera, I think, is tremendous acting.

Radio means you can play parts that aren't based on your looks or your age. It's a lot of fun. You can do tremendous things - play more diverse characters - that you wouldn't get to do in theatre or TV.

I think that when I was in my 20s, I wanted to go after dramatic roles, and I didn't have a tremendous amount of success with that. I kind of backed my way into comedic parts. When you're young, you kind of take yourself seriously, and you think, like, 'People need to see what I can do.' And it's so laughable, especially with actors.

The one thing I learned the most about acting is it takes a tremendous amount of courage to go there and stand still. It takes courage and guts to step out of your mind frame and depict something.

Obviously I'd love to work with any of these great directors because every time I've worked with them I've gained a tremendous amount as an actor. Each director has his own way of pushing you towards improving yourself.

I've seen people with a tremendous amount of educational background in the field not turn out to be terribly good actors, and I've seen people with no education in the field turn out to be people that I admire quite a bit.

A lot of broadcasting, I think, is doing a tremendous amount of preparation and trying to act like, 'Oh, this thought is just occurring to me right now' - and speaking sincerely.

As far as 'Jane Pittman,' I don't know that I could verbalize, to this day, what I felt once I got into that role. I did a tremendous amount of research. I need to feel as though I am in the person's skin.

The real, raw, driven-to-tears type scenes have always scared me since I was very young working as an actor. And to this very day, I get tremendously neurotic making sure nothing is forced or fake.

I think people are always really surprised when they realise I'm not a very serious person and that I'm not tremendously serious about acting. I don't like to rehearse; I hate improv. Directors that don't like to talk, they're my favourite ones.

The first-ever job I had was in a play, 'Trench Kiss,' with Caroline Quentin and Arthur Smith.

I spent a lot of time in the trenches in New York doing a lot of off-off-off Broadway theater.

People always think that I came from this dynasty of actors. But that's not true, because it was just dad. So as a child... I got to try it out really young... and I really loved it. I pretty much made my decision back then to become an actor. And then, more and more of us have joined the trend. So now, we're definitely an acting family.

I've played a lot of jerks, actually - my daughter seems to think there's a trend there, but I'm not so sure!

Thanks to Cheran, I play a city girl in 'Mayakkannadi.' I appear in trendy costumes and have more scope to perform.

I was at an acting academy for seven years prior to the trial.

I didn't go to no school for acting. I learned it all by trial and error.

I started my career with her. I was supposed to do my first film in Tamil in which she was the other heroine. The film was titled 'Vennira Aadai.' It was a love triangle, with Jayalalithaaji and I playing the hero's two love interests. But the director Sridhar removed me from the film after a few days' shooting.

There was never a moment where I was intentionally cribbing from another actor. More so, I grew up watching other actors design the character of The Joker to me, and obviously, the part was paying tribute to The Joker, and so I wanted to, you know, perform it to the best of my abilities in a way that it seemed to be paying homage to the character.

In past generations, people would try to play younger than they really are. My trick is, I don't try to play younger than I really am.

Film acting is really the trick of doing moments. You rarely do a take that lasts more than 20 seconds. You really earn your spurs acting onstage. I needed to do that for myself. I would hate to say at the end of everything that I never did a stage play.