A Quote by Edward Norton

What has always been most interesting about acting to me personally is that it affords you the chance to shift gears, both in terms of the experiences you get to have through doing it, but also the different kinds of things you get to represent.
Acting is interesting because you get to be involved in different stories and get to work with different people. Also, acting allows one to be a part of different stories, travel to different parts of the country and all the experiences put together make life interesting.
As an actor, you tend to get excited about scenes that are weighty or meaty because you get to shift gears in a way that's quite interesting.
I'm definitely not a dancer. I can move well, but it's more about the acting and the singing for me. Acting and singing are completely different, so I can't say which one I love better because I love them both. I love acting because I get to play different characters. But I also love my music because I get to portray me.
I started acting pretty much by accident. I was doing read-throughs for a playwright who I was assisting, and then an agency saw me and said they wanted to represent me and get with me through my training and so on and so forth. It was pretty much by chance.
I try to think of acting in terms of thinking and doing. People think of it as, "Oh, let's get inside this guy." They think that acting is being, or feeling, or emoting. It's as much doing. One of the first things you do as an acting student is ask, "Can you say words and do a task at the same time, like sweep a floor?" You get to watch the human condition, and there's always a "doing" aspect of it. This couple, they're carrying backpacks, where are they going? Students? Or are they carrying instruments? It stimulates the imagination. So acting is doing ... and I forget how we got off on that.
People think, "Oh my god, you've been doing this job for so many years, it must get boring." It's like, "No, hell no," because I get to sing, I get to dance, I get to be on TV and in films, I get to do merchandising, licensing, show up at conventions, write, or take photographs for my book. There are so many different things going on for me that it never gets boring. It's always fun and interesting.
It used to be irritating just because someone can meet you and before they would get a chance to get to know you, they’ll go find someone else’s story about who I am. For me personally, I just always think it’s more interesting to get to know the person myself.
For me, you go to university to meet lots of different people from different backgrounds. I think that's one of the most important things you get there. And you also get some sense of direction regarding what you want to do when you leave. I sort of know what I want to do in my life - I want to act and ultimately I'd like to write. And in terms of meeting people from different backgrounds, that's what you get on a film set. So the two most valuable things that university would have given me I've sort of achieved by being on a film set.
The interesting thing with acting, actually, is that you get to be so many different people that you get to do so much research on so many different things that I've learned so much about brain surgery and about astrophysicist-type of things and traveling to amazing parts of the world.
I think what's so interesting for me is the different roles that I play. I love doing the research, and I love - I feel fortunate in the sense that I get to explore many different worlds, of things that I may not really get to learn a lot about.
I read. It's also nice for me to get involved in schoolwork, which is a totally different world than acting. It makes me feel like I am doing things that normal people are doing at my age.
What I enjoy most is travelling to different places and meeting new people. For me, it's all about life experiences, and I'm very grateful that acting allows me so many interesting and fulfilling ones.
I also feel like the kinds of jobs I want right now - I consider them aspirational. I want to raise the bar for myself, and I am in this interesting spot where I do get offered a lot of things, but frankly, the majority of the things I get offered I'm not really interested in doing. I want to do the things that I have to fight for.
There's a limit of any form of representation; it's the same about writing about visual art. I still think it's useful for people to think through things in a deeper way, and use adjectives even if they're not sufficient, you know? I always find it interesting what terms they use to refer to the work. It's always different, and that's kind of intriguing. Sometimes it's clichés, but often it's really creative ways of paraphrasing or reformatting what to mean seems something else. I like that, personally.
I get things out of my system through my songs, but, because they can be about so many different things, it takes me a while to get through them emotionally.
Even the greatest musicians, they only represent themselves. You represent who you are and what your experiences are and what you have in your heart, and it's the same for me. I represent who I am and what I've been through and what I'm bringing to the music.
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