A Quote by Meryl Streep
Most of the great practitioners of the art of acting know exactly what they're doing; even in the best, most successful moments, when they let go of the awareness of what they are doing, they still, somewhere deep inside their body, know what they're doing. There is a craft.
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What interested me the most was that when I [traveled to Europe] I knew what Joseph Beuys was doing, he knew what I was doing, and we both, we just started to talk. How did I know what Daniel Buren was doing, and to an extent, he knew exactly what I was doing? How did everybody know? It's an interesting thing. I'm still fascinated by it because, why is it now, with the Internet and everything else, you get whole groups of artists who have chosen to be regional? They really are only with the people they went to school with.
I have to say, doing theater, that's what you're trained to do. Doing film, when I first started doing it, felt like something else entirely. It felt like the difference between, I don't know, waiting tables and painting a great work of art. It's night and day. I didn't feel like it was even acting.
Direction is the most invisible part of the theatrical art. It's not like the conductor in the symphony orchestra performance because he's standing in front of you waiving his arms. You now what he's doing. You don't know what the director is doing unless you know a lot about theater and even then you can only deduce it. You know it when you go to rehearsal. You really know it when they are rehearsing something of yours. I learned more in the rehearsals for The Letter than I have ever dreamed of know in the theater as a critic. If it doesn't make me a better critic, I'm an idiot.
Remember, I'm someone who got fired from Disney and eight days later started the first studio in 65 years with two of the most brilliant, successful people in the history of the entertainment business, doing something everyone said was somewhere between improbable and impossible. I'm afraid that's exactly what I love doing.
As an actor, I still don't really know exactly what I am doing most of the time.
Here is the beginning of understanding: most parents are doing their best, and most children are doing their best, and they're doing pretty well, all things considered.
As an actor, I still dont really know exactly what I am doing most of the time.
Art is never the voice of a country, it is an even more precious thing, the voice of the individual, doing its best to speak, not comfort of any sort, but truth. And the art that speaks it most unmistakably, most directly, most variously, most fully, is fiction.
Yet still, there are those special secret moments in our lives, when we smile unexpectedly-when all our forces are resolved. A woman can often see these moments in us, better than a man, better than we ourselves, even. When we know these moments, when we smile, when we are not on guard at all-these are the moments when our most important forces show themselves; whatever it is you are doing at such a moment, hold on to it, repeat it-for that certain smile is the best knowledge that we ever have of what our hidden forces are, and where they lie, and how they can be loosed.
I think we all understand disappointing yourself. Especially in the acting profession, which is probably similar to a political career, even the most stable, head-on-straight person is still going to be confronted with doing something that they shouldn't, that could affect their job or cause them not to be at their best - even if it's something as simple as taking a red eye for an audition at 6 a.m. the next morning and you know you'll be dragging.
You know when you're doing something right and when you're doing something wrong. As long as you feel like you're doing something right, and you're getting rewarded, then you're successful. But, if you're judging it on, Well, if I had that, I'd be successful - that doesn't work. I think doing what you love is success. Pretty cheesy. But it's true.
Forget being the best of anything. That's the fruit of the action, and you do the work -they say- for the doing, not the fruit. You can never really know how it's gonna turn out in the world but you know if you enjoy doing it. And ideas start flowing and you start getting, you know, excited about stuff. Then you're having a great time in the doing and that's what it's all about. If you don't enjoy the doing, then do something else.
If you want to be successful, it's just this simple. Know what you are doing. Love what you are doing. And believe in what you are doing.
What you'll tend to avoid doing is probably the most important thing you need to do because it'll probably be the most daunting and the most potentially successful thing you could be doing and that's usually out of people's comfort zone.
Pretending you know what you're doing is almost the same as knowing what you are doing, so just accept that you know what you're doing even if you don't and do it.
If I can still be successful making films and no-one will ever know me, then that would be great. Because we (actors) just like to do what we do. People who are doing it for fame, I don't know if they ever get really successful.
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