A Quote by Alia Shawkat

With independent film, as an actor, you have more involvement - it's very much more connected. It's not just like I'm showing up and there's another actor on the call sheet; you're very attached to it.
When you're making an independent film, it's like this actor plus this actor equals this funding, this financing. Pull this actor out, this actor is still here but this money's gone. It's this frightening puzzle mosaic that is the world of independent film.
People call me a theater actor, but I'm just an actor. But I tell my friends all the time - especially a lot that do theater and haven't done a lot of TV/film - that you have so much more control over your work onstage. When you go onstage, you can really see the difference between people who can really do it, and people who are just kind of pretending to do it. There is no editor, there's nothing that's going to stop the actor from showing what they can do unless it's not a well-written role.
To be an actor and a director, I actually felt it helped me tremendously to be in the scenes of The Hollars, because as you can see, they're very intimate, very intense scenes. You don't want to break the actor's character and you don't want to break their momentum, so as the actor, I tried not to call cut as much as I could, and almost make it feel like a play, just set this environment where these amazing actors could do what they wanted to do.
I come from theater, so I'm used to the hierarchy of an actor is just on the ladder, and above that is a director, and above that is a producer, and above that is a writer. But on a television show or film, the whole call sheet thing and being No. 1 on a call sheet, people look to you and almost expect you to exercise this power for good or bad.
It is very, very, very difficult for an American actor who wants a film career to be open about his sexuality. And even more difficult for a woman if she's lesbian. It`s very distressing to me that that should be the case. The film industry is very old fashioned in California.
I am an actor. It's very unfair when people categorise and term me as a television actor or film actor.
The film business is absurd. Stars don't last very long. It's much more interesting to be a proper actor.
An actor is an actor. There should be no labelling - mainstream actor, art film actor, serious actor, comic actor.
It's my job as a supporting actor - which I usually am - to support the film: to make 1, 2, or 3 on the call sheet look good.
Robert DeNiro, who may be the greatest living actor, usually acts in a way which is very stone-faced, like Steve McQueen. For example, Steve McQueen, if you cut the sound, you don't know what he's acting really. He gives to the lines, to the text, something very special, and he's very good. He was a great actor. But, to do a silent movie, you have to have more expressive actors.
It's a very, very rare moment when another actor hurts you. That's not normal. If anything, it's the actor accidentally punching the stunt double, which happens quite a bit.
My story about becoming an actor is a completely non-romantic one. I became an actor because my parents were actors, and it seemed like a very... I knew I was going to act all my life, but I didn't know that I was going to be a professional actor. I thought I was just going to work as an actor every now and then.
As an actor, there is so much more than just acting in the film. A lot of other things like networking and marketing is involved.
There was a golden era in film-making in Hollywood back in the 1970s, and although there is some great independent film-making in America, it's actually very hard to get independent films made in the United States. It's much more feasible from Europe.
I'm very interested in film, but any more involvement would happen organically. I'm not really seeking anything out, just looking at projects that come up that interest me.
Like every Aussie actor, I'd rather be working here; it's just we've all been forced to go to the States. Business-wise, as an actor, it's more lucrative, and there's also a lot more of it there.
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