A Quote by John Michael Higgins
An actor stands in front of a camera onstage, and he controls time and space for the audience. He tells them how long this will take, where to look, when to look, what to think about it. And good performers should be able to do their part with the sound off.
Related Quotes
It's hard to put yourself in front of a camera, in front of the world, when you don't feel like you look the part. I've always had that problem. But I deal with it every day. When I'm interviewing, I'm like, "How do I look? Do I look all right?"
As an actor, I just go off the director. I never ask how big the part is. I don't look at it from the perspective of, 'Is this going to be good for my career?' I just look for directors, and I think part of that is I knew I always wanted to be a director.
In films, you are a commodity. You are a look, something that the camera really likes, something that has struck an audience in a certain way. It's not really so much about transforming yourself the way actors do onstage. I think there's a difference between the skill of acting in movies and onstage.
You're watching the movie for the first time when you're working with the actors in front of the camera. You don't think about how the audience will react. You discover the film.
The hardest part about improv is getting the audience to relax and enjoy themselves, because most improv is not very good, and the audience is nervous for the performers the whole time. Not that they don't even like the show, but they feel bad for the performers.
That's the one thing that's funny about going from modeling to acting. In modeling, you're supposed to think about what you look like all the time. When you're in front of the camera, if you're not considering that, God knows what the pictures will look like. With acting, you have to completely forget it.
We no longer think of chairs as technology, we just think of them as chairs. But there was a time when we hadn't worked out how many legs chairs should have, how tall they should be, and they would often "crash" when we tried to use them. Before long, computers will be as trivial and plentiful as chairs and we will cease to be aware of the things. In fact I'm sure we will look back on this last decade and wonder how we could ever have mistaken what we were doing with them for "productivity"
In a normal movie, the director controls what you look at. The shots don't last very long because you're getting the audience to look at specific things. An IMAX shot, on the other hand, can be twenty or thirty seconds long.
No matter how long a break you take, an actor does feel comfortable in front of the camera.
I don't like to be my own audience, I find that being my own audience, being in the audience, makes me self-conscious, basically. So I tune in sometimes, with the sound off, to check it out and I back up to it. In the future I will look at it when some time has passed.
Every time I have people over, I watch how long they look at every part of the painting, or pictures on my computer. I have a few close friends and people that are constants. Whether I like their opinion or not, I've been hearing it for a long time and I can use it as this constant. I mentally pay attention to how long they look at every image, which ones they pause on and what parts of it they look at.
Patrick thought we should try to put an audience in front of one of the workshops, basically in front of the class and see how the performers rose to having an audience there, because he said, "You know, it's a really interesting test, because sometimes it gets even funnier."
As an actor, whether you look good or you don't, it's still about what you look like: Whether you are heavy enough to play this part or thin enough to play that part. The fact of the matter is, you can add a little weight with some extra padding, but you can't shave it off.
Nowadays, performers worry too much about how they look. They're not concerned about what they're really saying to their audience.
When I'm onstage and the singer sings, "I think about childhood friends and the dreams we had" and "on board I'm the captain, so climb aboard and we'll search for tomorrow forever more."My head is down because I'm trying to keep the beat. I'll turn and look at the audience and my eyes will scan the entire space. This is a transcendent moment. I can't explain it. It has a lot of meaning to me.
Actresses can get outrageously precious about the way they look. That's not what life's about. If you starve yourself to the point where your brain cells shrivel, you will never do good work. And if you're overly conscious of your arms flapping in the wind, how can you look the other actor in the eye to respond to them?
Related Authors
Arnold Schwarzenegger Quotes
Austrian
Actor
Benedict Cumberbatch Quotes
English
Actor
Bruce Lee Quotes
American
Actor
Clint Eastwood Quotes
American
Actor
Daniel Radcliffe Quotes
British
Actor
Dwayne Johnson Quotes
American
Actor
Jeff Bridges Quotes
American
Actor
Johnny Depp Quotes
American
Actor
Kevin Hart Quotes
American
Actor
Kevin Spacey Quotes
American
Actor
Leonardo DiCaprio Quotes
American
Actor
Rob Lowe Quotes
American
Actor
Robert Pattinson Quotes
English
Actor
Sylvester Stallone Quotes
American
Actor
Will Rogers Quotes
American
Actor
Zach Braff Quotes
American
Actor