"Comedy is acting out optimism."

-Robin Williams

"It’s tough, acting. you have to walk two lines of a tightrope. there’s the all consuming fear of failure… and there’s also confidence – you have to be confident to try new things – And they fight each other all the time."

-Jessica Chastain

"If I wasn't an actor, I'd be a secret agent."

-Thornton Wilder

"The gratification comes in the doing, not in the results."

-James Dean

"If I wasn't an actor, I'd be a secret agent."

-Thornton Wilder

"If any of the work, that any of us do, contributes to the stretching of culture, the stretching of boundaries of empathy that’s expected of an audience… that’s the holy grail."

-Riz Ahmed

"If any of the work, that any of us do, contributes to the stretching of culture, the stretching of boundaries of empathy that’s expected of an audience… that’s the holy grail."

-Riz Ahmed

"An ounce of behavior is worth a pound of words."

-Sanford Meisner

"Men acquire a particular quality by constantly acting in a particular way."

-Aristotle

"When I ask if you’re talented, you’d better say yes. Not in a boasting sort of way, just a quiet confidence: ‘Yes, I’m talented. I know I am.’ You need that. And you need persistence and you need patience, and that’s not contradictory."

—Bryan Cranston

"Vomit first. Then try to make something pretty with it."

-Tatiana Maslany

"Acting is behaving truthfully under imaginary circumstances."

-Sanford Meisner

"Perseverance is failing 19 times and succeeding the 20th."

-Julie Andrews

"Lots and lots of things scare me but you just get on with it. Fright can transform into petrol, you just have to use it to your advantage."

-Judi Dench

"You cannot try to get the job. Just go in there, have some fun, and do your version of that part. This is what I’m selling. If you want to buy it, that’s cool. Have some adjustments for me? That’s fine, I’ll make some adjustments, but this is basically what I want to do. That’s the attitude, sort of a ‘f*ck it’ attitude. Not f*ck you, but f*ck it."

—Sam Rockwell

"You put your nightmares up there, you put your dreams up there and people can see them better because they can stand outside of it and recognise themselves inside it."

-Holly Hunter

"Yes, years of compromise and disappointment have added depth to my acting."

-Rufus Sewell

Just worked with an #acting #coaching client on physicalizing vulnerability and allowing transparency into our character's inner life at stage scale. There are different thoughts about how on camera and onstage acting function, but playfulness is in both.

"My approach is to look at the character’s world. Often, we get so locked into memorizing lines and practicing how we’re going to say those lines, when in reality the lines are just a symbol or representation of the person. I spend a lot of time getting into the character’s life. Every character has a point of view, so what informs this character’s point of view?"

—Malcolm-Jamal Warner

"If I wasn't an actor, I'd be a secret agent."

-Thornton Wilder