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.
When Levin thought what he was and what he was living for, he could find no answer to the questions and was reduced to despair; but when he left off questioning himself about it, it seemed as though he knew both what he was and what he was living for, acting and living resolutely and without hesitation.
I do not know what meaning classical studies could have for our time if they were not untimely that is to say, acting counter to our time and thereby acting on our time and, let us hope, for the benefit of a time to come.
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.
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.
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.
I feel blessed to have had the accumulation of life experiences that I've had, life experience just adds to the depths of a persons richness, as with acting!
I'm very aware that when one is acting in the theater, you do become kind of animal about it. And you're reliant on instincts rather than tact a lot of the time.
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.