Quotes About Acting

I have decided to dub on my own for my role in Vazhipokkan. It is an interesting storyline and hence I accepted the offer.

As an actor, I think a mistake that any storyteller can make is to play the ending.

My father was a GP; my mother was a teacher and amateur actress. My father was a bit of a storyteller, but the acting influence must have been from her - yes, put it down to my mother.

I never wanted to be a brand director. I didn't want that kind of stamp. I wanted to be more like Pacino or Dustin Hoffman or Meryl Streep or De Niro - you know, a chameleon as a storyteller - because I love all kinds of movies.

It's fun to do accents; it's fun to do different periods - that's why you become an actor. Because it's fun to be a storyteller and play make-believe.

I tell stories, and I do it through writing, through acting, through my stand-up, and through directing. All the hats I wear - producing as well - ultimately, I am a storyteller.

I wanted to do what I was seeing Dorothy Dandridge doing, what I saw Marilyn Monroe do, what I saw Bette Davis do. I wanted to do that: to tell stories. I wanted to make people laugh, make people cry. I wanted to be a storyteller.

When I discovered that, through acting, you can speak a beautiful language aloud and have a relationship to language that isn't one that's just eyes-to-page, pen-to-page - it's one that's full-bodied, full-voiced, full-heart... it really opened my heart and made me feel like I could be a storyteller.

Casting is storytelling.

In acting, every day is different, and I guess it appeals to my storytelling imagination. But I've been very fortunate to get the chance to do what I want to do and earn a living from it to pay the mortgage.

You've got to trust your instincts, your judgment and trust the storytelling that came before and the quality of the acting with the emotion.

Acting isn't necessarily pretending. It's storytelling. It's giving someone your perspective on something.

I like making people feel things. Acting doesn't seem like lying but like storytelling.

I've always been drawn to storytelling, and acting is the most immersive form of storytelling you can get involved with! You're actually in the story when you're acting.

With acting, there's a certain amount of independence you have within the framework of the storytelling. When it's done well, it's a collaborative medium.

Growing up in an atmosphere of storytelling made me an actor.

When I read a script, the important thing is that I can connect in some way with that character and have some idea from what his story is that I can tell that story too, because that's all acting is, is storytelling.

I never made a clear-cut in my mind between theatre and film, as I always felt that at the heart of both of them is storytelling and acting.

I have always admired the Russian cinema, their incisive storytelling, sharp camera work and brilliant acting in them. Indian filmmakers can learn a lot from it.

I actually find it harder to act in the scenes where there's not much happening, say having a milkshake in the diner. That is far harder to do than straight scenes where there's a drama going on and you have something to do.

Our characters were antiseptic but we weren't. And if you remember what we did on BATMAN, as the scripts were written very funny, we played them very straight.

So the fact that a lot of straight men have gone on to play iconic gay roles and to be lauded for that is fantastic, that that story is being told. But wouldn't it be brilliant to see gay men play their own experience?

I think it shouldn't matter at all what character people play, but of course there is a narrative that's very clear, that openly gay men aren't playing straight in leading roles.

When everyone around you is doing all this incredible pirate acting and you're having to sort of play the straight guy and move the story forward, you kind of want to be doing some of that pirate ripping it up stuff, but in truth, to be a part of that project is what I love.