I'm terrible at learning lines. I'm good at learning lines when I don't have to be word-perfect.
I'm pretty focused on my career, and if it comes down to hanging out with somebody or learning my lines, it's gonna be learning my lines.
I was delighted to have lines when they came - learning lines for film isn't a problem, but television is a little different, because we shot those shows the whole way through.
I've had terrible, terrible, terrible shows where I just thought, "That was off-key" or I forgot lines or I thought I looked like an idiot, and then you're leaving and talking to people, and they're like, "I had the best time of my life! That was amazing!" You just never know.
As you're learning your lines and the character you're playing, you're going to make mistakes but I learned more about Shug Avery. I learned my lines, but everything had to be done quickly.
I'm a terrible actor. I'm still learning. When I first started, I wish I knew then to trust myself more, really. I was in a terrible panic in the early part of my career.
I was terrible student at Michigan, terrible. Because there was too much else to do. I was learning form too many other sources to go to class.
I don't worry too much about learning lines per se. The memorization is the easy part for me, usually. For me, it's more about working on the context, back story, intention, motivation, etc. Once that's in place, the lines come pretty naturally.
Usually the German translators do something terrible, especially with Tom Wolfe, which is that they make it local. So if the characters are from Harlem, the translators put all this Berlin slang into their mouths, and that's just terrible. You cringe when you read that. But there really is no good solution to the problem, except learning English.
You make a decision whether you just work on the script and believe in every moment and pick out every moment, or if you sit down and memorize lines. Once you really dig into a script, learning lines becomes almost second nature.
So you have the challenge of just learning the lines, period, and not only learning them, but learning them to the extent that you assimilate them, so that you're not worried about what the next word is coming out of your mouth when it comes to doing a scene. And you're also in the trenches with the writers, just in the wonderful kind of back and forth of how is it best to say something, even if it involves four or five words. I love that kind of thing.
I was studying for the SAT's and learning lines.
Learning lines is bloody boring.
Learning lines is my biggest challenge.
And the wild things roared their terrible roars and gnashed their terrible teeth and rolled their terrible eyes and showed their terrible claws.
Terrible is the force of the waves of sea, terrible is the rush of the river and the blasts of hot fire, and terrible are a thousand other things; but none is such a terrible evil as woman.