Quotes About Acting

Hathoda Tyagi is such a strong character despite no dialogues and expression. He's the most difficult to break. It would've been interesting to play him.

I was never a glamour puss whose career was really based on a look or an attitude. I've been basically playing the same parts I am at 55 that I was at 35. I get cast as strong women, and that can be a mother or a judge or anything.

Apparently, I hear from people I always play strong women. I don't see them that way.

So writing became a way to get to act in things that I thought were meaningful, and hopefully write stronger roles for other women.

All good actors are actresses. The more like a woman they are, the better they act, because a man's salvation is his femininity. Women have stronger sensibilities than men, which allows them to go a bit deeper when they are on and off the stage.

I do tend to find when you're playing characters, often - just for the time you're playing them - there are sides of your personality that get stronger because you draw on them more.

I feel that I can't do certain things that have sent to me, scripts, because I think that really - I've been June Cleaver for so many years, because we went back, you know, and we did - 20-year hiatus we had - and we went back and made 105 new ones. And so I really feel very strongly that there are certain things I won't do.

Molly Shannon and I used to always talk about that we really felt strongly that we were comedic actors, that we weren't comedians. You just played things real and the comedy came out of the context.

I strongly feel, for me to act in any movie, the director of the movie should be known to me. Though this fact should not be important for most artists. But, you can either call me shy or traditional in my thinking - but this is an important aspect for me to sign movies.

I see writing and acting as different parts of the same continuum. Writing is better for intense emotion. If you're very angry about something, you shouldn't present it as strongly when you're acting. But if you're really angry and writing about it, that's the best way to get it out and across.

I strongly believe that when you are cast in a role, there will be similarity in the character and you - why else would you be chosen for the character?

I feel strongly for the younger actresses when a lot of their career is based on how they look. That must be hard when your looks begin to go and you haven't built up the wealth of character parts to get into something else.

The word 'career' and 'actor' really don't fit in the same paragraph, let alone sentence. There is no career structure for actors.

As actors, we went where we wanted to, and the camera followed us: it was like having another person in the room. There was no formal structure to the process. It was very liberating.

I think in some ways, acting and writing are the same. You're getting inside the skin of someone else; you're creating their language and their actions. As a writer, you have to see the whole picture and the structure, and you have to understand every character.

I've been asked which of the other arts novel-writing is most like, and I have come to believe it is acting. Of course, in terms of pattern it can be like music, in terms of structure it can be like painting, but the job to me is most like acting.

I always had a struggle, which I still do, when you're playing a character and it's not necessarily your morals or your values. You're playing a character, but the way the media will sometimes ask you if these are your opinions, you know - they make you responsible for that, and I take issue with it because I don't believe in censorship.

I struggle to learn by rote. I've had meltdowns on set. Which is embarrassing and shameful.

What is a struggle is that acting isn't a place where you go to work and you do that thing. There aren't set boundaries, like an office, where you go and work. For me, the work is always on my mind.

It's not a struggle, but sometimes when you're gone for a month or two, you start to miss your friends. I love acting so much that it fills that gap of being sad about not being able to see my friends.

Don't leave your job without getting an acting offer. Very few people in the industry are lucky to get a film without much struggle and be successful.

I'm not in the business of trying to be a celebrity. I like entertaining and being in movies. I like when people leave a movie and talk about it with friends. My biggest struggle is the press... its an odd thing and something I've had to learn a lot about.

Movies were a struggle for me - they didn't come easy.

Acting is a strange profession, and, yes, sometimes I struggle with its worth, its value in the world.