A Quote by John Mahoney

What I mostly do is take the script, analyse the hell out of it, see what's in there, see what kind of person I'm dealing with, and then forget I'm playing a father and just play a person who exemplifies all those things.
When you're playing a real person, there's a balance between playing the person in the script and playing the person as he was in life. You have to be respectful and true to who that person was, but at the same time tell the story in the film.
When you're playing a real person there's a balance between playing the person in the script and playing the person as he was in life. You have to be respectful and true to who that person was, but at the same time tell the story in the film.
In studying music, you're dealing with a person, not just what comes to you on a piece of paper, and it's important to get hold of what it is that lies between that person as a person, and the things which they're producing on the paper. I don't know whether I see things in too complex a fashion, but often people will do things which are not actually their nature, but will do things because they think that's what they should do.
If I'm playing a fat person, then I actually eat a lot of cakes and as much as I can. If I'm playing a person in shape, then I'll increase my intensity of boxing training. It's really dependent. It kind of allows me to take whatever specific character I want.
We see only the script and not the paper on which the script is written. The paper is there, whether the script is on it or not. To those who look upon the script as real, you have to say that it is unreal - an illusion - since it rests upon the paper. The wise person looks upon both paper and script as one.
"I can't forget things, or ignore them-bad things that happen," I said. "I'm a lay-it-all-out person, a dwell-on-it person, an obsess-about-it person. If I hold things in and try to forget or pretend, I become a madman and have panic attacks. I have to talk.
In fact, I take the view that God, in his infinite wisdom, didn't bother to spring for two joints - heaven and hell. They're the same place, but heaven is when you get everything you want and you meet Mummy and Daddy and your best friends and you all have a hug and a kiss and play your harps. Hell is the same place - no fire and brimstone - but they just all pass by and don't see you. There's nothing, no recognition. You're waving, “It's me, your father,” but you're invisible. You're on a cloud, you've got your harp, but you can't play with nobody because they don't see you. That's hell.
I read things and imagine them and then kind of start trying to kind of take what I imagine and make it visual for everybody else to see. It just happens to be my personal vision, and every person's is going to be different, every book reader.
I tend to get comfortable with the dialogue and find out who the person is in the script and try to hit that. People are sort of independent of their occupations and their pastimes. You don't play a politician or a fireman or a cowboy - you just play a person.
Any actor would love to just pick up a script and be like, 'I can connect to this person, and I can see myself playing him.'
When you say to a person of colour, 'When I see you, I don't see you Black; I just see everybody the same' think about that. You don't have the right to say to a person, 'I do not see you as you are; I want to see you as I would be more comfortable seeing you.'
I don't see how a person can be sensuous - unless they're just, you know, following some kind of script - without being vulnerable.
If you’re the kind of person who has no guts, you just give up every time life pushes you. If you’re that kind of person, you’ll live all your life playing it safe, doing the right things, saving yourself for something that never happens. Then, you die a boring old man.
I never understood who all those people are behind the actors! When you see them on the red carpet on TV, you go, 'Why does that person need such a large entourage?' And then you realize that every single person there has a role to play.
There's something about seeing someone who has actually no real supernatural powers and only being able to throw things with precision that kind of makes people be like, 'Oh, I can see that. I can put that person in real life, and I can see it play out as a human being.'
Jeremy tried to be an interesting person. The trouble was that he was the kind of person who, having decided to be an interesting person, would first of all try to find a book called How to Be An Interesting Person and then see whether there were any courses available.
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