A Quote by John Casey
I have an occasionally recurring stutter, but not when in character on stage in a play. Odd. James Earl Jones has the same pattern; he stutters in everyday life but not when acting. Preparation requires an actor's concentration to make the words belong to another person, which is its own sort of trance.
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I always approach every play based on the cast. When Denzel and I did 'Fences,' I didn't go to rehearsals and say, 'OK, James Earl Jones did a wonderful job in '87. Let me see if you can come close to James Earl Jones.'
There was all this talk when Obama got elected about how we were living in a postracial world. But we're not. Until we get to the point where James Earl Jones can play, say, George Washington, race matters. You wouldn't put a white actor in blackface to play Othello. You shouldn't have a white actor in what amounts to yellowface to play Asian.
The opportunity to carry water every night to James Earl Jones on stage is a dream come true.
A couple of years ago my friend and business partner Jeffrey Richards was doing the Gore Vidal play, The Best Man, starring James Earl Jones. I asked Jeffrey out to lunch and asked him what he thought of James playing Grandpa in You Can't Take It With You. Jeffrey thought it was a fabulous idea and so did James.
One person I've always wanted to work with who would be an amazing guest star would be James Earl Jones.
I want to be remembered for a body of work so that when the next guy comes up, he could think of Sterling K. Brown in the same way that I think of Andre Braugher and James Earl Jones.
I saw 'Othello' with Christopher Plummer and James Earl Jones.
I'm not a trained actor. I have neither read acting books nor gone to acting school. But I have certain fundamentals on how I approach a character; the basic skeleton of my preparation is based on observations from real life.
An actor uses his body as a tool and an instrument. In the same way a musician plays an instrument, the actor uses his body to convey feeling and emotion. An animator uses a pencil or a computer to create the same thing, the same exact way... An actor is taking words that are not his own, and he has to bring some kind of authentic life to those words. It's the same goal, to create this authentic life. Even if it's a drawing, or if it's a cartoon, you're still trying to create authenticity because, if the character emotes authentically, it has a power to connect with the audience.
A song in a musical works best when a character has to sing - when words won't do the trick anymore. The same idea applies to a long speech in a play or a movie or on television. You want to force the character out of a conversational pattern.
When I was a young kid, my pops introduced me to it. He took me to Harlem, 145th and Edgecombe, to watch the filming of Claudine with James Earl Jones and Diahann Carroll. That was my first taste of seeing a set and the cameras, and I was bit by the acting bug at a young age.
..in that moment i realize how much i love the little everyday routines of my life..the details that are my life's special pattern, like how in handwoven rugs what really makes them unique are the tiny flaws in the stitching, little gaps and jumps and stutters that can never be reproduced. so many things become beautiful when you really look.
George Clooney and Brad Pitt, with those 'Oceans' films they do, they get to work together, make a whole lot of money, and make a major film statement. Imagine if once a year, myself, Denzel Washington, Laurence Fishburne, James Earl Jones, we did some relevant film together to make a statement.
Thank God that I am not over 75 so that James Earl Jones knows who the hell I am.
With acting, it's all about internalizing the character for me and doing all the preparation you can. So the day you first step into your wardrobe, you can walk like the person. That's really the moment where the light bulb goes off. You're nervous; any actor will tell you that. Robert De Niro will probably tell you the same thing. He may not want to share that with you, but he probably goes through it. That's why actors are so neurotic.
Words are acoustical signs for concepts; concepts, however, are more or less definite image signs for often recurring and associated sensations, for groups of sensations. To understand one another, it is not enough that one use the same words; one also has to use the same words for the same species of inner experiences; in the end one has to have one's experiences in common.
