Leon Askin Quotes

When you're in a theater, it's about reaching the back rows. When you have a camera in your face, it's just about knowing the size of the room.

Typically, actors overplay jargon or toss it away in an extravagant display of casualness. Real people hit the important parts hard.

Every actor comes with their own experience, method, methodology.

'Community' was a very important part of my growth as an actor. I see it as my acting school, not having a lot of formal acting training.

The acting of the '50s is really stylized, so you're not really getting a lot of authentic, everyday characterization of people.

I left my career in Hollywood, moved back to New York, and went to Lee Strasberg and studied with him for the rest of his life.

For every role, I brought certain elements of the character. Even on 'White Collar' over six years, I tried to keep the set fun and breezy and Howard Hawks-y and very of the tone of the show.

I'm not a Method actor - ask anybody.

I studied with Sandy Meisner at the Neighborhood Playhouse. I was in the last class to study with him before he had his larynx removed, so I actually remember the sound of his voice. He was an incredible teacher.

For better or worse, I don't necessarily categorize myself as a method actor; I'm not going to make claims that I stayed in character 24/7.

Some characters need to be more performance-orientated; some, you have to be still.

When I first went to acting school, they made me lose my accent, which is very upsetting for me. The first day of Shakespeare class, I remember the professor was like, 'Oh, boy. Oh no, no, no, no. No, no, no,' and sent me to a voice and speech class to get rid of the accent immediately.

I am constantly asked, 'What's the difference between acting in the theater and acting in film?' The only answer I can give is the space - you adapt to the space. But acting is acting.

Doing theater makes you feel like a real actor.

I'm not a method actor because it refers to a certain kind or technique of acting that I have studied about, and I know I'm not one of them.

Theatre is different. We can spend two weeks around a table talking about subtext. In opera, there is a score, and people already know their parts. And they move differently. I find all this liberating.

I like the continuity of singing my lines together instead of going line by line.

I'm not a Method person, so I'm not like in character all the time.

I am not that big a method actor.

Wrestling has to be more aggressive. It has to be bigger; it has to translate to the back of a football stadium. With acting, when that camera is up close, they can see your nose hairs twitch, and you have to pull back everything for it not to look clownish. There is that different mindset.

I stopped modeling so I could go to drama school at the William Esper Studio. It's Meisner.

I went to theater school where there is a lot of holding each other's faces and crying, and a lot of kid gloves.

I'm a perfectionist, and I like to do each scene slightly differently every time.

I never really thought I was a method actor or anything like that.

I have never been to an acting school, and on the sets of 'Karwaan,' Irrfan was my acting school. By observing him, I learnt to improvise in the scenes along with focusing on the smallest of the details.