A Quote by Claire Danes

Psychology and acting are very closely linked. It's just about studying people and how they work. It can be an incredible discipline and exercise. — © Claire Danes
Psychology and acting are very closely linked. It's just about studying people and how they work. It can be an incredible discipline and exercise.
The thing about discipline is that people misunderstand the word discipline. People think discipline in the dog world is punishment. Discipline is how you achieve what you want to achieve in life. You have to be very focused, very disciplined, very consistent, very diligent. All of those things.
I kind of fell backwards into acting. I was studying to be a high school teacher. I look now and I understand completely, or actually barely, how much work it is to be a teacher. It's an incredible amount of work.
Well, it's not all the same, but there are a lot of parallels. I'm not sure how to answer [on psychology background], but I think when I was studying psychology I had a professor and a friend who would talk about "process" all the time. Your process, his process, the group's process. There's some carryover from that discussion to my creative work.
I understand how difficult it can be for an African-American in today’s society. In fact, I can relate to black people very well indeed. My ancestors once owned slaves, and it is in my lineage to work closely with the black community. However, just because they were freed over a century ago doesn’t mean they can now be freeloaders. They need to be told to work hard, and the incentives just aren’t there for them anymore. When I’m president I plan to work closely with the black community to bring a sense of pride and work ethic back into view for them.
Before I got into acting, I was always interested in psychology, which I think is very common with a lot of actors because in a weird way, psychology and acting kind of seem interwoven.
It's always been a dream of mine to do a voice for a Disney movie. I think Disney movies and theater are very closely related. That would be amazing. I don't know about doing a Broadway musical, just because I don't really know how people do it. You just work all the time. That's something that I would definitely have to work up to.
People talk about discipline, but to me, there's discipline and there's self-discipline. Discipline is listening to people tell you what to do, where to be, and how to do something. Self-discipline is knowing that you are responsible for everything that happens in your life; you are the only one who can take yourself to the desired heights.
My favorite thing about acting is you have to learn how to work with people that you probably would never try to. Some people just aren't supposed to be in a room together, and you have to be in a room with a group of people who might not all get along and you have to figure out how to come together for one thing. That collaboration is special, and people don't get to exercise that. I think that's why people become stubborn, and I think that's why people become uninspired to change. In this job you have to.
I learned more about psychology in the five hours after taking these mushrooms than in the preceding 15 years of studying and doing research in psychology.
What is work going to look like in the future? How are Democrats going to be able to give people a sense that they can have good jobs, or if they don't have good jobs, maybe they have to have universal basic income - we have to have a longer discussion about the future. This is not just an intellectual exercise; it's an exercise about giving people hope.
People like Bill Murray are incredible at what they do and are definitely my flavour. Although Will Ferrell, Sacha Baron Cohen and Ricky Gervais are also incredible actors. In their comedy, they make these stupid people feel so real. These guys are really setting the bar very high, and I learn as much from them about acting as I do about comedy.
Discipline is not just about work, but about diet and about exercise and on a deeper level, about concentrating and making sure that my brain is staying in good places and the neurons are firing in positive ways as opposed to getting into anxiety, panic-attack states of mind. When I'm crazy. You know?
A lot of actors on film sets... very often they're not paying attention to the physical world around them. I think through studying art, I've always had that awareness and that's something that I've wanted to bring in to go beyond acting... As a form of expression, they are intrinsically linked.
By studying psychology i want to be a better actor. There's something about studying body language and non-spoken emotion - I know the innate response. But to really study it like a science would be fun.
We have so much access to one another through technology and everything else, that we're very much used to people being real. When folks go on TV and they're basically acting - if they were good actors they'd be acting and paid for it for a living, but they're not good actors. When we see bad acting, it doesn't look like bad acting, it looks weird, and we are turned off by it. I'm not talking about anybody in particular, that's just politics right now. This generation, I feel like, has incredible bullshit detectors.
That daydreaming seemed important at the time, but when I asked my teacher Katagiri Roshi about it, he said, "Oh, it's just laziness. Get to work." But as for discipline, I don't even use that word. I think more about passion or love. What I've really learned is the way the mind moves, and how the mind works. Rather than discipline, I know how to seduce my mind.
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