I don't come to work as an actor. There are many directors who can direct without ever having acted and do a great job and connect with their actors and lead them to excellent performances without themselves having had an acting background.
Of course, when I say that human nature is gentleness, it is not 100 percent so. Every human being has that nature, but there are many people acting against their nature, being false.
Juilliard definitely emphasizes the theater. They don't train - at all really - for film acting. It's mostly process-oriented, pretty much for the stage.
A person who is good for anything ought not to calculate the chance of living or dying; he or she ought only to consider whether in doing anything he or she is doing right or wrong- acting the part of a good person or a bad person.
If pity was always equally alive and acting in all individuals and in all circumstances, we could do away with moral. Unfortunately, it is not compassion, but rather it's contrary, selfishness, that act most strongly in us.
The physical stamina [in Revolution]. I was just shocked by it. I didn't think I had it in me ever, and I wasn't terribly young when I did it. I was in my early forties. That was the first thing I was struck by, not by the acting, not by anything else, but by the physicality.
Acting is hard work. At times, it's very energizing and enervating. It's childish. It's also responsible. It's illuminating, enriching, joyful, drab. It's bizarre, diabolical. It's exciting.
I feel like a bit of a phony sometimes - I started acting because I didn’t know what else to do. I filled in all these university application forms and honestly didn’t want to do any of the courses.
I was planning to go into architecture. But when I arrived, architecture was filled up. Acting was right next to it, so I signed up for acting instead.
A majority of women seem to consider themselves sent into the world for the sole purpose of displaying dry goods, and it is only when acting the part of an animated milliner's block that they feel they are performing their appropriate mission.
We must begin by acknowledging a hard truth. We will not eradicate violent conflict in our lifetimes. There will be times when nations, acting individually or in concert, will find the use of force not only necessary but morally justified.
Improvisation sometimes seemed more like jazz than acting, like verbal jazz, with the actors playing a theme back and forth, and then introducing another theme, incorporating it, somehow trying to work their way all together to a meaning of some kind, or at least a conclusion.