Being an actress does not mean that each thing that happens in my life has to be news or meant to be shared with others. Acting is a profession, and once I leave the sets, I want to be left alone.
In 2007, Lindsay Lohan seemed to be on top of the world, a bona fide star who had her pick of acting gigs. But it wasn't long before the veneer cracked, and Lindsay's life began to shatter.
I had an amazing experience doing 'Skins.' It was the first acting I'd ever done in my entire life, so I had to learn on set for those two years. I had to keep my head screwed on and learn from the other cast.
I'm always thinking I'm messing up. I did a lot of classes. I can't stand being on stage or the only one talking in a room, so class really helped me deal with that. It doesn't really get any easier, but it helps you focus on the acting.
Acting advice is a bit like your parents teaching you how to drive a car. You know they're right, but you still kind of want them to shut up a bit.
Certain people are like 'Oh, here come the Feminazis!' You end up acting 10 times nicer than you even need to be, to be the opposite of the stereotype like 'You're the man haters!' We're always bending over backwards being extra nice. And I don't know if being nice is my legacy.
The most interesting thing about acting is when you go to the dark places, that's a lot of energy. When you go to the happiest places, it's also a lot of energy.
You're much better off creating positive rewards, complimenting people for acting correctly, rather than punishing them when they act incorrectly.
I grew up in a lot of different places, mostly in Kansas, I really started thinking seriously about acting in high school; I just did it better than most of the other activities in school.
The greatest acting really is spoken without words, or at least I like to think that.
Since I started acting, I had to quit a lot of bad habits. I've tried to stop biting my nails, because people always look at your nails during auditions. Truth be told, I still have a 'cheat nail,' but I've been cheating less and less.
My singing led into acting, and that is how I discovered acting.
Partying and having all of those pictures taken distracts from the work that I do. It's not why I started acting. I didn't get into acting to be written about. It kind of just happened - so I accept that it's my life.
I used to spend a lot of time at football training, but that time was later spent in amateur acting classes and my local youth theatre, in plays at school and after-school clubs. That filled the void.
In high school, I did some musicals, but I never took acting until college. I was studying opera, classical voice, and a speech teacher asked me to audition for this play, and I got the lead.
I had no inclination to perform as a kid. I was a shy child - I always had my nose in a library book. I didn't start acting until I went to college. Once I started, it seemed to fit like a glove. I felt completely at home on stage. It was the perfect way for me to express myself, even better than writing.
My number one passion is acting, but I also think there's something so special in being able to support a script and an idea and take it all the way through to fruition. I think that process is so rewarding.
I still assume that, any day, I'm going to be exposed as a fraud. That, like I once heard Gene Hackman say, the acting police are going to burst in and take away my card.
I think a lot of people, if they get the opportunity to do some acting, they think, 'I might be a star.'
I may have a talent for acting, but I am incapable of doing anything else.
We, in the late '60s, '70s and '80s, are acting like we have just discovered freedom and liberation. But I'm sure that many women have worked for that for such a long time.
I had spent my childhood making up adventures in my head. Then I realized when I went to acting school that there were adventures written down, and you could learn lines, and you could do the adventures for real, not just in your head.
I really enjoy singing and I really enjoy acting, but singing I've been doing since I was really young.
Singing is about telling a story. When you are onstage, you get to be your own self... When acting, you're someone else.
I was an okay singer. I was an okay dancer. But acting? Never could do it.
I think sometimes soap acting gets an unfair label for being bad and over the top. The lessons I learned there were so valuable. Seeing yourself every day on television, you learned what worked and didn't work, what was bad acting and what wasn't. Memorizing scripts became second nature.
I think I have so much more to accomplish in this world of acting. There are many different types of characters I want to play. I want to keep making people laugh, and I want to explore dramatic roles as well.
There's something happening in the world that didn't happen before. We are acting like one big brain.
It used to be that film stars didn't want to do TV, and actors weren't singing, and singers weren't acting. Everybody's kind of crossing over to whatever they want to do. So I feel like, if you have it, use it. If God's given you this talent, then use it.
I think anything emotional adds to your acting and singing, no matter what it is that you go through. It will always add to it, never take away.
Since I started acting, I've always been aware of the sort of 'beastly entity' that is America and Hollywood, and semi-consciously, I devised a kind of route in - I'd seen a lot of people try and fail.
The hardest achievement in acting - in my opinion, anyway - is nailing a role that absolutely nobody else could have played. Pacino owned Michael Corleone... but DeNiro could have owned it as well. Who else, though, but Val Kilmer could have nailed Jim Morrison? Does anyone besides Will Ferrell pull off Ron Burgundy?
I've always been very passionate about acting. I appeared in panto in the Everyman from the age of five.
But then acting is all about faking. We're all very good at faking things that we have no competence with.
Stand-up can take you in so many different places, man. So many doors can be opened up from stand-up comedy, and the first one that was opened up for me was acting. But you can go from acting to being a TV personality to being a radio personality to being a writer to being a producer, to just being a visionary, to voiceover work.
I don't care if someone is new to acting or experienced in acting: you always learn something from them. It's just like people in life - whether they're young or middle-aged or old, you always learn something from someone.
