When I got to high school and college, I was more involved in athletics then I was in acting. At that time, I was trying to figure out what my identity was and roles became more gendered, it was a little bit more challenging for me to stay with the acting.
I always tell people that, if you feel like you're portraying a character really well, you're not acting. If you can reach that point where you don't feel like you're acting, than you're doing your job and the audience will believe you.
There's no one actor in particular that I want to model my career after, except for the people who have been able to keep their career varied and who choose things that interest them. That opportunity is all I really want.
I have a little studio in Chinatown, and I sometimes go there and rearrange my brushes. But I would have to stop acting altogether in order to become a painter. At the moment, I'm still interested and active as an actor and director. Besides, I rather think acting and painting are all part of the same creative urge.
If you're going to play a brain surgeon, you just have to learn how to say the words. You don't have to go and learn how to cut open somebody's scalp. I think acting is acting. Being is something else.
Who I always refer to as my acting mentor when I got into junior college is an acting professor by the name of Tom Blank. He took me under his wing, and he was that strong male figure. He was tough love, but he believed in me, saw everything that I had.
My first real kiss came when I was 10, and it was in an acting class. I had to do a scene from a movie where someone gets kissed under a tree, and I did not want to do it! But my acting partner wanted me to feel comfortable, so he bought a picnic basket with all these snacks. He made such an effort - and it was cute.
I really just wanted to be a writer, but people tell you, 'You should have a backup career,' so I thought, 'OK, I'll act.' That was the foolishness of my vision for my life - that my backup career would be completely undependable.
Before singing, I was acting. I was always more into acting than singing. It was the first thing I always wanted to do.
The art of acting is not to act. Once you show them more, what you show them, in fact is bad acting.
I didn't know what acting school was, so I went onto the computer and typed 'acting school.' I found one in Berlin, and I found ones in Vienna, Zurich, and London. I went to all of those places to audition. You were supposed to have two monologues, and I only had one.
It's tough to put into words right now, but I finished my career how I wanted to. Through the ups and downs of my career I've still been able to do everything that I've ever wanted to accomplish.
We don't want bores in the theatre. We don't want standardised acting, standard actors with standard-shaped legs. Acting needs everybody, cripples, dwarfs and people with noses so long. Give us something that is different.
I loved my career at Goldman Sachs. I believed in business principle number 1: if the client succeeds, our own success will follow. This principle formed the basis for my career and my leadership style.
Life is not about acting in films alone. There are so many things in life other than films and acting.
Actors don't hate acting. Most people don't hate acting! Whether you're a child mucking around with your friends or a grown up being paid to be on a set, pretending to be other people is fun.
Acting, for me, was kind of a way of survival, honestly. I'm the baby boy out of four different sisters, and I grew up in a house with so many different personalities that acting was the only way to not go to therapy.
There are places where writing is acting and acting is writing. I'm not so interested in the divisions. I'm interested in the way things cross over.
Even though I wrestled Ric Flair very early on in my career, it was a short match, so getting to wrestle him later on in my career was a benchmark. Wrestling Hulk Hogan was a benchmark for me.
I dont work for production houses. I only work for good scripts and roles. If you follow my career graph, you will find that I have not given a single flop yet in my career. I am proud of it.
'Hey Dude' was shot in Arizona, and that took me to the West Coast. We did 65 episodes. It was not a show that a ton of people saw, so it was like doing acting classes and getting paid for it. At that point I had the acting bug. So I went to L.A. to give it a try and never left.
In terms of career options, I didn't think about MMA at all. I don't know if I really thought it was a career path for many women. For someone like me, even in my prime, it wasn't something I really considered.
I've been acting since I was ten years old. I had two lines in Snow White and the Seven Dwarves at the community theater I was very focused and I loved it. My parents believed in the arts and being well rounded. So I played piano and violin, I danced and acted. They never thought I would go into acting though. They just wanted a well-rounded child and it was a bit of a shock to my dad when I said "I want to go to acting school" because he is a psychology professor and was thinking of something more academic.
I do some acting. And there's a difference between "I do some acting" and "I'm an actor."
Acting is about acting, not about being a movie star.
Playing Karen was so satisfying that it almost cured my acting bug completely. Not that I had conquered the world of acting. It was just that I had something to prove to myself when I started Will & Grace. Now I feel like, okay, well, I've satisfied that.
When I started studying acting in New York, I didn't plan to be an action hero. I just wanted to learn acting because I felt it was something I needed to try to do for myself, to express something, my inner pain, or something I couldn't get out.
Actually, I was writing as I was acting - it was kind of simultaneous. I wrote on 'E20', which started this whole 'EastEnders' journey. It's not like I was writing and then I got into acting - they have always been kind of together for me.
I'm really getting into acting and TV. 'Sports Illustrated' is a big, iconic brand I'd like to work for, too. But TV and acting is really funny and a bit more exciting than shooting all the time.
With the amount of flops that I have seen in my career, one would think that my career would have been over long back. But it has sustained. And I truly believe it did because I lived life on my own terms.
I enjoy them both [singing and acting] a great deal. I have a passion for both. Maybe acting just a little bit more because it's more of a challenge for me, while music comes so easily.
The next night I got on an airplane, and flew to New York and looked into acting schools. Four or five acting schools. One of which was the Neighborhood Playhouse, which I started at six months there after.
My family was very supportive of my acting. They didn't really have a choice because I got jobs acting before anyone could really say anything. It paid my way through college and helped my family out.
When I'm talking about one of the things that define my career and what is most special to me, stats, they are what they are. The bottom line is you want to impact the place you go and the people you're around, and I hope I've done that in my football career, both on and off the field.
So I did that for a long time in my career, and I waited for parts to play myself just physically down a little bit. But I do feel like I'm at a place in my career now where I don't necessarily fret about that too much anymore.
I figured, if I failed, I'd tried something that I hadn't tried before and if one movie was going to destroy my career than I didn't have much of a career to start with. I just went for it. God willing I wasn't over the top and didn't embarrass myself.
Making films has never just been a job to me, it is my life. I have some interests outside of acting - I sing and I've written books, for instance - but acting is what keeps me going, it's what I do, it gives life purpose.
And because performing for a game involves real acting. The way they create a game is very similar now to how they create a film. I've always wanted to stretch my acting skills, and the timing being what it is, I couldn't say no.
I've told Kamal Haasan, Amitabh Bachchan, Naseeruddin Shah, Nana Patekar, I just want to touch you. They are the gods of acting. When people call me God, I say, no, I'm still an angel or saint of acting. I still have a long way to go.
Acting is just part of my life. It is not my life. Whatever time I invest in acting I give my 100 per cent. But there are other things which are also important and I like to give equal attention to them.
I was just trying out and having some fun. I don't think I'd want to pursue singing as a career; it's an on-the-side thing. It would be great if I could make a career out of it but if I can't, that's OK too.
Making 'Fargo' for FX has been the highlight of my career. A writer can search his or her whole career for a network partner who truly understands and encourages their vision. For me, the search is over.
I hate the Communists and have for many years and don't feel right about giving up my career to defend them. I will give up my film career if it is in the interests of defending something I believe in, but not this.
The Marine Corps is some of the best acting training you could have. Having that responsibility for people's lives, suddenly time becomes a really valuable commodity and you want to make the most of it. And for acting, you just have to do the work, just keep doing it.
In my acting class there was this acting exercise going on, and I remember asking a buddy, "Do you ever do this at your apartment when no one's home? Do you ever act out these hypothetical moments?" And he goes, "No, Lizzie, because that's called crazy." Whatever, I was 20 and doing it so who cares.
I drifted into acting and drifted out. Acting is not everything. Living is.
There's a very fine line between underacting and not acting at all. And not acting is what a lot of actors are guilty of. It amazes me how some of these little numbers with dreamy looks and a dead pan are getting away wit it. I'd hate to see them on stage with a dog act.
Making films has never just been a job to me; it is my life. I have some interests outside of acting - I sing and I've written books, for instance - but acting is what keeps me going: it's what I do; it gives life purpose.
It takes so long to write a script, thinking to yourself, "Am I wasting my time? Am I putting everything into this thing that maybe just won't ever exist?" I always think, God, acting is so much easier. At least for acting you have the source material already.
We give antibiotics to people when they're dying or when they're not well; that's acting God. I mean, acting God is using the tools of creation to try and improve human life, human existence. I don't think that that's a huge problem.
You can't have the real thing on camera - that's the nature of cinema. When you see people like Daniel Day-Lewis and Ralph Fiennes screaming and hyperventilating, you're seeing the phoniest kind of bad acting. You may as well have a 'men at work' sign. It's not acting if you can see it.
I don't think acting is addictive. If I stopped acting tomorrow, I really wouldn't care. If you told me that I would have to sell real estate in New York City to look after my family, that would be fine with me.
But 'Hey Dude' was shot in Arizona, and that took me to the West Coast. We did 65 episodes. It was not a show that a ton of people saw, so it was like doing acting classes and getting paid for it. At that point I had the acting bug. So I went to L.A. to give it a try and never left.
There are a lot of actors who don't like reality stars 'cause they feel these people aren't accomplished. They haven't done this or that, but they are savvy. They have found a way to make it work. I could dissect your career all day long, but I'm focused on my own career.
I've never listed my education degree as why people should vote for me. I think the average person is thinking more about what I've accomplished in my professional career and what I've accomplished in my career as a legislator.
When I first started acting in college, at Cal, the thing that I loved about acting was not being onstage but going into rehearsals. The thing, as I look back on it now, that I was most attracted to, was that I felt like I'd found my family. It was just a bunch of loonies.
I look back over my career and I almost pissed it away. I got a second chance and I've made the most of my opportunity. I play every game like it's the last game of my career.
I've definitely had obstacles in my career - my whole entire career - to stay a certain weight, to get smaller than I have been, but I look at my family, I look at where I come from and that's not really in our genes.
Quite honestly I never had a desire to be an actor. I tell people, 'I did not choose acting; acting chose me.' I never grew up wanting to be an actor. I wanted to play football.
I think that acting is no fun unless it's hard. I'm not titillated by acting or being an actor unless I have to work hard.
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