A Quote by Greta Gerwig
Something people say about acting is that acting is listening. But I think that writing is listening, too. That you really have to listen to what are they saying and what they're communicating to you. And so, a lot of it is just getting stuff down.
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Acting is about listening, and that's something that took me awhile. You almost don't have to learn your lines, if you listen to what they're saying and move it along.
I would rather do a play because it's instantaneous. You go on the stage, and you know whether it's happening or not. Somebody asked me 'What is acting?' And I said, 'Acting is listening.' And if you ain't listening, nobody's listening.
Acting is mostly about listening. If you just focus in on what the other person is saying, acting takes care of itself to quite a large extent.
The secret is to listen, open your mind, listen to the pros. With the help of the UFC's Performance Institute, too. Listening to my coaches and listening to my body, too. Having discipline. It's not just listening, too, because sometimes people have the knowledge but don't know how to use it. You need to be able to put that to practice.
Acting doesn't have anything to do with listening to the words. We never really listen, in general conversation, to what the other person is saying. We listen to what they mean. And what they mean is often quite apart from the words. When you see a scene between two actors that goes really well you can be sure they're not listening to each other - they're feeling what the other person is trying to get at. Know what I mean?
I will do plays as long as they're interested in having me do them. It's the biggest opportunity to learn the most about how to act. Something I discover every time I'm doing one is how little I know about acting - how important the art of listening is, and how important it is to listen with your entire body. You can tell so much of a story with stillness, and a lot of that can be from really actively listening to your scene partner.
Leaders can get stuck in groupthink because they're really not listening, or they're listening only to what they want to listen to, or they actually think they're so right that they're not interested in listening. And that leads to a lot of suboptimal solutions in the world.
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.
When I'm in writing mode I tend not to listen to music. I usually have a gestation period before I start writing. When I'm listening, it usually happens on the road. So, we'd been listening to a lot of music on tour the year before and all that stuff sank in.
Sometimes I can listen to music - sometimes there's no choice, especially if I'm out writing at a coffee place. But sometimes it's too distracting. If I'm listening to something I really love - I have to stop and give everything over to it. I'm listening to its structures, its melodic lines, the bass. It takes up too much of my head - in a good way.
I kind of connected the dots, like, 'Oh, we're just saying stuff. We're just saying things that make sense, so let's just say them like you say them in real life.' It was my first and one of my only acting lessons 'cause I never really studied acting.
I really just enjoy listening to talk [to John Hurt and Charlotte Rampling]... not even about acting or anything. It's interesting because I felt really connected to all these people very easily. They're all very open emotionally, like we're in the scene together, so you never feel like anyone's acting.
People have to listen to somebody speak, that the person that you're listening to is saying the right stuff, and that's all that really counts.
I started listening to rap music in 2012 or something, because that was when I started becoming friends with American people, and they showed me rappers to listen to. I actually started listening to Macklemore a lot. He's the first rapper I started listening to.
I love jazz. So to me, there are two main types of jazz. There's dancing jazz, and then there's listening jazz. Listening jazz is like Thelonius Monk or John Coltrane, where it's a listening experience. So that's what I like; I like to make stuff that you listen to. It's not really meant to get you up; it's meant to get your mind focused. That's why you sit and listen to jazz. You dance to big band or whatever, but for the most part, you sit and listen to jazz. I think it comes from that aesthetic, trying to take that jazz listening experience and put it on hip-hop.
Listening is harder than just acting. Listening is the hardest part.
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