In philosophy, they talk a lot about humans being actual organic machines, and the idea of free will is something that we've made up. We actually don't have free will. We're acting according to our programming as organic mechanisms.
Acting is the perfect idiot's profession.
As an actress I find the most enjoyable part of acting is really just to please the director. I just want to please my director.
I want to be in a musical. I love music, and just to be able to mash the music and the acting together, it would be just incredible.
When I was in high school, I had already kind of been working in the industry and had done a couple of acting jobs. There were definitely some girls that were either jealous or thought I was a snob. I was just trying to be a teenage girl and go to high school and have fun like everybody else!
I grew up in Georgia, and I started acting in plays when I was like eight years old, and I always memorized everyone's parts, not just my own, and I always memorized everyone's blocking. Whenever anyone wasn't there, I would always jump in. I was very hands-on.
My first acting class was taught by a little known playwright, David Mamet, who then cast me in my first play, opposite John Malkovich.
Once I start putting all my little insecurities in my mind, I'm not actually acting. Then it's about me - and it should never be about me. It should be about the character.
Stewart's interest in serious acting gives her something in common with Theron - and, like Theron, some of her most provocative work has come through working with women.
I remember my choir teacher in high school told me, 'When in doubt, sing loud.' I'm a terrible singer, but I always auditioned for the musicals, and would get cast in them because I really would just put it all out there. That was really good advice, and I think it works for everything, not just acting.
I grew up learning ballet, and then I took up contemporary as I got older. I probably thought I was going to be a ballet dancer when I was younger, but at a certain age, I really was more interested in acting.
It has become commonplace to call Trump a reality TV star. That is said as an aspersion, the way Ronald Reagan was called an actor. But Reagan's acting experience, his ability to talk to the camera and not yell to the hall, is what helped make him such a good politician. It is the same with Trump.
'Serious acting' is the kind of acting that I don't ever respond to.
My life has been the antithesis of that book 'The Secret'. I've always been interested in doing what I do. I love storytelling and I really enjoyed acting, but it never seemed like a realistic thing.
I never wanted to lose out on an acting job and wonder if I hadn't been trained enough.
I'd really like to do a movie, either as a producer or director. My ultimate fantasy would be to direct a movie and produce the entire soundtrack. I don't really see myself acting.
The essential meaning of perestroika for Gorbachev and his supporters was creating and acting on alternatives to failed and dangerous policies at home and abroad.
The hardest thing about movie acting is that if you're playing a character who changes within the movie, you've got to do that, but you've got to do it out of sequence, because we never have gotten to shoot in sequence, and that's really, really tough.
I like both music and acting, and they both have a lot in common - timing, immediacy, stuff like that. But acting is more regimented. You wait around for hours, you don't get to write the script, you get hired. Music represents me better. I'm not acting; I'm just expressing myself.
As a stand up, and often in acting, there is no place for the most intense feelings. Rage, genuine sorrow, naked hope... These things don't fit on a comedy stage and if you act you'll get to express them once in a while. Music is a place for the intensely personal.
I love music and I love acting. I always keep that in the forefront, not all the other distractions around me.
It's not that I'm retired; I just no longer accept acting work.
I'm still insecure, but when I first started acting, I was really insecure. I glared at a lot of people. I assumed everyone hated me. Somehow that scowl has turned into an acting career.
I had a period when I was sixteen where I started to get a big head. I was going through puberty, and I was nominated for an Academy Award. My head got inflated. My friends were the real ones who said, 'You're acting different.' But the truth is that I don't need that, because I don't get out of hand.
Even if I think in English, it's more a language of acting than French.
I studied acting at Boston University. I was in the theater department there. Somewhere in there I decided that wasn't what I was going to do and I went to the B.F.A. film program at N.Y.U.
Working with Adrien Brody was like going to Julliard, but instead of four years, I went for four weeks. He was like the Albert Einstein of professors, it was just the best experience of my life. Adrien was the most influential mentor in my acting career thus far, and even after the movie he continues to mentor me.
Going into my 20s, I was uncertain, trying to figure out what my relationship to acting is.
So I was determined to use my last two years in college doing something I thought I would enjoy, which was acting. And it was probably because there was girls over in the drama school too, you know?
I'm enjoying it, but I still don't know why I'm hooked on acting.
So from an actor's perspective, you really have no idea how you're acting.
People assume that acting is an easy job. When you actually do it, you know how hard that is.
I've always loved acting with adults versus like the whole High School feel.
But I think the other is a little more like bullfighting, a little more daring and although I appreciate good acting and I liked being versatile my whole career, it kept me working.
Some stars like to hide behind the whole idea of acting. But really good actors are not hiding at all. They're not afraid to be disliked, to be a little unsavoury.
Most of my acting in general is about what's going on in the head, and the lines are just something that comes out.
