Right before I got 'Sons of Anarchy,' I actually quit acting for 18 months and didn't read a single script, and I wrote a film. I felt like I needed to do something that I had control over, as an artist, and also just do something where I felt like I had some control over my life, as just a human, out in the world.
I sometimes have to turn off the fan part of my brain when I'm acting; otherwise, it would be terrible.
It's a wonderful acting challenge to tell a story and convey emotion with only your voice.
I spend the majority of my life not acting.
I recognize that I have a unique position to be a role model to young girls because I am doing something that they consider glamorous, which is acting, and yet I took a time to really get my education and study mathematics, and I think math is the cat's meow.
I've been acting for a long time now, but as narcissistic as this sounds - and I don't mean it to sound - every time I see my name up there, there is real sense of pride.
I got into acting classes. I didn't want to just go by luck.
I always used to pretend to be different characters - cowboys, that sort of thing. I used to think that the Indians lived over the mountains that I could see out of my bedroom. As I grew up, I started to understand that acting was actually a craft, and there was no question about it, that was exactly what I was going to do.
I want to make a clear distinction between people who take acting seriously and people who call themselves actors because they've been on reality TV or something.
After working for a while, I realized that acting was only satisfying about 30 percent of what interested me about the filmmaking process. Somewhere around age seventeen, I started to realize that if I'm very particular about the people I work with, then I can have the best sort of master class possible.
My acting career wasn't going where I wanted it to. I wasn't getting good parts. I got so bored with myself that I started writing.
Oh, yes - being interested in acting never changes. Acting is in your blood, and of course I'll always be interested in it.
I'm a lazy creature when I'm not acting.
I started playing violin when I was six, so I thought I could be a professional. It wasn't until I was 15 when I got into acting classes and realized this was what I wanted to do.
I'd just like to carry on acting.
Although I started off as a child artist, I left acting in between, as I felt that I was missing the fun of school days. But a little later, I became keen on acting again and started going for auditions.
I went to a public high school, and after graduation, college wasn't really much of an option for me. I didn't believe I had the money or the grades at the time, so I continued to work and save money to support my acting career.
It was the most fun I've ever had on a movie. It was one of the happiest times in my life. I was living in New York, and I really enjoyed acting at the time. Also, it's funny because that was also the time when I went downhill.
With acting, you do want to get every job, and you're trying to get every audition, but then you reach a certain stage where you start to kind of gravitate toward the stories and the people that have a similar heartbeat.
For me, comedy is constantly presented as this fake casualness, like a guy just walked on stage going, 'This crazy thing happened to me the other day.' And he's in front of 3000 people, and he's acting like an everyman, and he's getting paid so much money.
There was a lot of dancing in '76, '78, in the '80s. A lot of dancing. The burn years. A lot of dancing. And for a while, working fit in with all that. 'Moonlighting' - that wasn't acting. It was people telling me 'Let's create a character who is you, so you can play him the way you are. The guy you are at night.' It was fun.
My personal opinions on any subject are really not relevant, not important, and to the extent that I might inject them, I am acting improperly as either a District Court judge or as an appellate court judge.
I would like to continue acting. But also - if this is a dream world where everything could become true - I'd want to be a ballerina.
Acting is a mix of luck and choice. I got lucky.
I just went to an acting agency one day and just said, 'I would like to act. Would you take me?' And they took me.
What's fantastic is that there's a real growing appreciation for performance-capture technology as a tool for acting.
I'm not scared of many things in front of the camera. Everywhere else, yes, I'm terrified. But acting is just pretending, and you are exploring feelings in a safe environment.
You get money out of acting. You get gray hair out of directing. Actually, I get more of a rush from directing.
I love acting it's apart of me and I try to put a little bit of myself in each of my roles.
Acting is strenuous, both physically and mentally. But if you are passionate about it, nothing can be more exciting than acting.
I've been singing and writing songs only a little longer than acting. I really enjoy both.
Stand-up comedy is a lot about amplifying emotions and situations; movie acting has a lot to do with mellowing things down and making them subtle. The transition was almost terrifying because of the magnitude of change.
I hadn't really thought about doing any acting at all post-'Center Stage.'
When you turn up for work, especially with looking down the barrel of a show, you're hoping the person you're acting opposite of is going to be on your kind of crazy wavelength.
There's so much crap attached to acting: the fame aspect, the ego aspect, the 'Am I good, am I bad, am I being judged, who likes me, who doesn't like me...'
Yeah, I think the common denominator - and this is probably going to sound like Acting 101 - but the common denominator is belief in the character in the moment.
