A Quote by Sam Shepard

It's hard to explain why exactly, but I think that when I began writing plays, it was from an actor's point of view more than anything. I had the feeling that if you put yourself in the position of the actor on stage and write from that perspective, it would give you a certain advantage in terms of being inside of the play.

Sam Shepard

Quote Topics

Actor Advantage Anything Began Being Certain Exactly Explain Feeling Give Had Hard Inside More More Than Anything Perspective Play Plays Point Point Of View Position Put Stage Terms Than Think View Why Would Write Writing Yourself

Quote Author

Sam Shepard
American - Playwright
November 5, 1943 - July 27, 2017

The perspective of eternity is not a perspective from a certain place beyond the world, nor the point of view of a transcendent being; rather it is a certain form of thought and feeling that rational persons can adopt within the world ... Purity of heart, if one could attain it, would be to see clearly and to act with grace and self-command from this point of view.

John Rawls

There is no more reason for a room on a stage to be a reproduction of an actual room than for an actor who plays the part of Napoleon to be Napoleon, or for an actor who plays Death in the old morality play to be dead.

Robert Edmond Jones

Since I've started to star in pictures I have always managed to retain my singularity of purpose when I got into the business, which was to be an artist, as an actor, more than anything else. But to get the certain kind of role you want, you have to be in a certain position in the business and it's dog-eat-dog and it gets very hairy and you can lose your point of view sometimes.

Bruce Dern

An actor is an actor is an actor. The less personality an actor has off stage the better. A blank canvas on which to draw the characters he plays.

Arthur Lowe

When an actor plays a scene exactly the way a director orders, it isn't acting. It's following instructions. Anyone with the physical qualifications can do that. So the director's task is just that – to direct, to point the way. Then the actor takes over. And he must be allowed the space, the freedom to express himself in the role. Without that space, an actor is no more than an unthinking robot with a chest-full of push-buttons.

James Dean

I have nine years of scholastic actor training, and what I've learned is that training does not an actor make. You have to have an artful way of looking at things. You have to have a certain point of view. And you get that point of view through experience.

Jonathan Majors

It was inevitable at some point that I would bump into one of my father's plays. The reality of the situation is that I'm a jobbing actor, and any actor would give their eye-teeth to have one of those roles. It's a no-brainer! I'm pleased the stars have aligned around 'Arcadia.'

Ed Stoppard

I would say I am more concerned with the plays I'm going to do than the movies. I'm more comfortable in a play. In film, there's always a certain sense of control, of holding back. The stage is different ; there's more to act. There are more demands put on you, more experiences to go through.

Al Pacino

Sometimes perception is almost more important than the skill level of an actor. And if you give too much away, you have nothing to take for yourself and put onscreen. If people feel like they know you too well, they won't be able to indentify with the character you're trying to portray. Or they'll feel that you're just playing yourself, and then you just become a personality actor. And that's the death of any actor.

Shia LaBeouf

I think that the more success you have as an actor, I think, the greatest advantage of being successful as an actor or being in this business is that you have the chance to pick and choose, or you have people coming to you with a much more different variety of roles.

Catherine Zeta-Jones

In terms of writing, I think what most fiction writers treasure more than anything is the feeling that they're living for the length of a book inside another person.

Lauren Groff

Business is very personal. For me, everything is extremely personal. With actors, the fact that I write helps, because when you say to an actor "Oh I want you to do it a little bit more ...," without saying what you want more of, then the actor doesn't know what to do. But if you can put into words exactly what you want, then the experience of writing is helpful with that.

Marjane Satrapi

I think, basically, I am an actor. Sometimes I'm an actor who's writing and sometimes an actor who's directing, but I think if I'm forced to fill out a form for my tax return, 'actor' is the first thing I write down.

Chris Eigeman

As a working-class actor, leaving school with no qualifications, being a printer and then becoming an actor and then working with people who to a certain extent had had a leg up. I never had that advantage. It's less an artistic need to express myself and more a need to prove myself.

Eddie Marsan

Being an actor in TV or movies is different. A film or TV actor, if put in theatre, won't know certain dimensions, while a theatre actor won't know certain things when he comes before the camera. So I think a film actor can learn emoting from this theatre counterpart, while the theatre actor can learn about camera techniques from the film actor.