A Quote by Betty White

I just want to bring as much natural as I can. I'm not saying that people who take acting lessons are false. They're much better than I am, but it doesn't work for me. — © Betty White
I just want to bring as much natural as I can. I'm not saying that people who take acting lessons are false. They're much better than I am, but it doesn't work for me.
I'm a much better listener when I'm acting than I am as a person in real life because you learn as an actor that listening is so important. You have to really key into what the other person you're acting with is saying and how they're saying it and react in the moment to what is going on.
As much as I love acting and I hope to be doing it for a long time, it almost feels more natural for me to be a producer. I came into all of this because I'm a fan of movies and I wanted to find any way I could to be a part of it all. I happened to take the acting route but it could have been a million different ways in. Now that I'm producing it's just really fun for me to work with people that I really admire and put people together who I think will work well together. Just having a little more control.
Acting didn't solve much! If it did, I would have ended up much less crazy than I am today, but I'm not. At least for me, acting is a relief - a relief to be able to admit certain things about myself and disguise in my work, in my characters.
I am being ripped off, because I've never lied to the press. Just as much truth I bring to my work, a journalist should bring that much truth to their work.
Honestly, I don't look at it as work because I have way too much fun on set to actually classify it as work. I know a lot of people who are like, 'Man, acting's so much work.' And I'm like, 'No, it's not. I'm having fun.' And I want to keep doing that. I don't ever want to give up acting.
In all my work, in the movies I write, the lyrics, the poetry, the prose, the essays, I am saying that we may encounter many defeats - maybe it's imperative that we encounter the defeats - but we are much stronger than we appear to be and maybe much better than we allow ourselves to be. Human beings are more alike than unalike.
If you press-mold a pot or if you slab-build a pot, the work has got to take much, much, much longer than if you work on the wheel. And I to this day have the ideal that I want my work to be not too expensive, so that if people buy it and break it, it's not going to be the end of the world. I'm not interested in having things in museums, although some of our work has ended up there, but that's not what I'm striving for.
I need to work with great directors and actors, people who are better than me, so that I am challenged. It is like playing sports - surfing, basketball, it doesn't matter what it is, if you play with people who are better than you, then you get better too. It is the same thing with acting.
I certainly don't think I'm deserving of taking up space forever as a human. There's a whole generation of people yet to be born that are going to be so much more evolved than I am. I don't want to take up space. They're going to be better equipped to make the world a better place than I am.
You can take lessons to become almost anything: flying lessons, piano lessons, skydiving lessons, acting lessons, race car driving lessons, singing lessons. But there's no class for comedy. You have to be born with it. God has to give you this gift.
Some people have much more pull than other people. But when I say that the public has ultimate responsibility, I'm not saying it in a moral sense. I'm just saying it in the sense of what is it that's really going to bring change.
I still feel there are much smarter self-promoters out there than me. I am very methodical about my messaging, and I know how to gain attention very quickly. David Blaine is an example of someone who's better at self-promoting than me. He is much better than I am.
I love taking on roles that other people have written for me just as much as I take on writing - just not as much of a, 'Oh, that guy.' I want people to start saying, 'Oh, Brett Gelman's new piece is coming out. That's a Brett Gelman movie. That's a a Brett Gelman show.'
I would love to just have the work do the talking. We're in positions where people ask us questions; they want to know about more than just the work. And it can go into areas where I've completely shot my mouth off, whether it's too much about my private life or being too opinionated about things in the world. I think the better thing to do - I've learned this from people far wiser than me - is to do very good, quiet work behind closed doors.
Take your vitamins. Exercise. Just work to love yourself as much as you can - not more than the people around you but not so much less.
...We may encounter many defeats, but we must not be defeated. That sounds goody two-shoes, I know, but I believe that a diamond is the result of extreme pressure and time. Less time is crystal. Less than that is coal. Less than that is fossilized leaves. Less than that it's just plain dirt. In all my work, in the movies I write, the lyrics the poetry, the prose, the essays, I am saying that we may encounter many defeats - maybe it's imperative that we encounter the defeats - but we are much stronger than we appear to be and maybe much better than we allow ourselves to be.
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