Quotes About Acting

I hardly knew anything when I first arrived. I had to learn how to act as I went along. After about a year I got a grip on what acting was all about and it started coming straight from my heart; I wasn't just saying the words any longer.

It was my first straight dramatic role, and the most adult, intelligent one I have ever played.

It's very hard to play the straight lead girl and still make her sparkly and fun and real.

I'm at least getting my foot in the door as far as doing straight dramatic parts, which no one would have ever considered me for in the '80s. I never objected to that because I love doing comedy, and I'm not the kind of actor that insists that unless you're doing a serious dramatic role, you're not acting.

I come from straight theater.

When I'm playing comedy, I never do 'jokes.' Sometimes I'll deliver a line in a way I think is more likely to get a laugh, but all the best comedy is played straight. What's funny is the way it hits the world around it or the way it hits the other characters.

TV kind of worked out naturally for me. I was fortunate to do a show like 'Breaking Bad' and then go straight into something like 'Friday Night Lights.' It's not something I focus on, but when they're great projects, I can't pass them up.

I've committed myself to perfecting the art of the straight man. I try really hard not to crack up.

The brilliance of Adam Scott is that he is so damn funny in a straight man role.

One of my favorite comedy performances of all time is Charles Grodin in 'Midnight Run,' and in a lot of things he's done. I think he's hilarious as the straight man, playing it real.

There have been amazing performances by straight people playing gay and by gay people playing straight.

What you're doing is acting with yourself. Well, I'm my favourite actor, so in a way it's quite straightforward for me.

I was a dramatic kid. I was always like, 'Watch me put on my play, Mom and Dad! You have to watch me put on all these outfits and do this play!' But my family is very academic and straightforward and normal Midwestern people, so the idea that I could act as an actual job wasn't really there.

When you're younger, the mental strain of being a successful actor, jumping from role to role, and trying to have some kind of personal life, can really be terrible.

That is a strange phenomenon, people pretending to be other people.

It was a strange experience, making a love story and not getting along with your co-star in any way.

It's hard for me to talk about Dom right now because I am Dom right now. So it's a really strange exercise to try to reflect on something that I am at the moment. But I guarantee you that when I'm done with the movie and you ask me that question, I'll be able to give you something insightful.

I think that's so strange, because they do know that we're all actors and we perform things that have not necessarily anything to do with us personally.

I guess Species was a movie made for me and hence I bagged the role. In fact even when acting, I never thought the outcome would be so good which I think it was! The entire role was a challenge. I was to be this strange yet sexy thing which was challenging!

It was strange at times. We had to make out so much that we kind of got over it. It was really awkward.

I keep forgetting I'm speaking in an American accent sometimes. The dangerous thing is that you end up forgetting what your real accent is after a while! It's really strange; I've never done a job in an American accent before.

Being a Barrymore didn't help me, other than giving me a great sense of pride and a strange spiritual sense that I felt OK about having the passion to act. It made sense because my whole family had done it and it helped rationalise it for me.

I didn't think I could be my imperfect self. I pretended I was Marcia, so I was always playing this role. I became her, but yet I wasn't. It's strange.

What led me to be an actor is that I have a strange something in me that can drastically change the way I appear to the world. Growing up, I couldn't understand why people would always have different ideas of me - but because of that I became aware of how you can manipulate your own ability to change. And then I learned to make a career of it.