A Quote by Corey Stoll

It's sort of cliche, but when you're playing drunk, your character is trying to appear sober. — © Corey Stoll
It's sort of cliche, but when you're playing drunk, your character is trying to appear sober.
Playing a drunk doesn't mean being a drunk, only bad actors try to be drunk. A real drunk tries to be sober, he wants another drink. How a character hides their feelings tells us who they are, no one shows their feelings except bad actors.
I remember in one of my early films I had a drunk scene. It was Kiss Me Goodbye, with Sally Field, and I was playing this kind of nerdy guy who gets drunk and dances. And so I thought, "Oh well, I'll just get drunk and do the dance." And it was wonderful, but then I had the rest of the day, and the next day. So I learned that you don't really have to do the things that your character is doing. But us actors, we use something called sense memory. I've certainly been drunk before, and part of my job is to recall that without getting drunk.
If an important decision is to be made, they [the Persians] discuss the question when they are drunk, and the following day the master of the house where the discussion was held submits their decision for reconsideration when they are sober. If they still approve it, it is adopted; if not, it is abandoned. Conversely, any decision they make when they are sober, is reconsidered afterwards when they are drunk.
Sometimes I write drunk and revise sober, and sometimes I write sober and revise drunk. But you have to have both elements in creation — the Apollonian and the Dionysian, or spontaneity and restraint, emotion and discipline.
The thing is, even if you're playing sort of a heightened character and playing inside sort of a heightened reality, you can still apply your own truths to those characters.
Never Forget what someone says to you when they are drunk. Because Drunk words are Sober Thoughts
Everybody in recovery smokes. If you don't like smoking, don't even bother trying to get sober. Just stay drunk.
When you're trying to do character work that's different from what people expect from you, you're sort of in territory that is uncharted, and you don't know how it's playing all the time.
A lady came up to me one day and said 'Sir! You are drunk', to which I replied 'I am drunk today madam, and tomorrow I shall be sober but you will still be ugly.
Sometimes you'll see people give performances in comedy with an ironic detachment where they'll sort of be remarking on the character from outside of it. They're sort of commenting as they're playing the character. I think it's hard not to do that. I've certainly done that.
Always do sober what you said you'd do drunk. That will teach you to keep your mouth shut.
That which the sober man keeps in his breast, the drunken man lets out at the lips. Astute people, when they want to ascertain a man's true character, make him drunk.
Burns had his faults, his frailties. He was intensely human. Still, I would rather appear at the "Judgment Seat" drunk, and be able to say that I was the author of "A man's a man for 'a that," than to be perfectly sober and admit that I had lived and died a Scotch Presbyterian.
Most Americans are born drunk, and really require a little wine or beer to sober them. They have a sort of permanent intoxication from within, a sort of invisible champagne. Americans do not need to drink to inspire them to do anything, though they do sometimes, I think, need a little for the deeper and more delicate purpose of teaching them how to do nothing.
It's nice to sort of walk in and at least create the illusion that you are, or your character is, a well-rounded human being, a complete person. Especially when you're playing these impressive, high-functioning professionals. You feel like you have to come in sort of guns blazing.
You don't really have to do the things that your character is doing. But us actors, we use something called sense memory. I've certainly been drunk before, and part of my job is to recall that without getting drunk.
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