Joe Eszterhas Quotes

At drama school I learned the Stanislavski technique, which uses sentimental memories and bits of your past to put real emotion into the scene.

My acting technique is a combination of a lot of different ones. A lot of it is Meisner.

I grew up the son of an acting teacher but I've never been really good at articulating what that process is. It was always a bit more internal.

Some of the best actors in the world are very exterior actors, Anthony Hopkins being one of them. He knows exactly how to turn his face to get a certain expression. He knows exactly what to do with eyes, and with his voice. It's very exterior.

I was a student of Stella Adler and then later Lee Strasberg, and they were into sensory work. At its best, acting is not about words - even when the words are important.

That's one of my little expressions. I never really studied acting so I kind of kiddingly talk about "building your circle" and "mooding up," because I really didn't learn any technique.

These kids only want to talk about acting method and motivation. in my day all we talked about was screwing and overtime.

Some actors get by with behaving, not acting. You've got to sell the effect. I act more in the 'Nightmare' movies because it's not like me. I'm acting, not reacting.

I am not a method actor, though I studied for a year with Lee Strasburg.

I think you can really tell a good actor if you can put a camera on them and they can just talk and emote and react and you don't have to keep cutting away from them, because they are the language and the behavior. It's all a tour-de-force performance.

All you've got to do is turn up and have a few facial tics and be a lunatic and throw someone around the room or blow their brains out and people think it's good acting.

Having a guy on a microphone yelling lines at you is counter to a lot of acting techniques.

Character acting is a much braver pursuit than a guy who runs around and intermittently clenches his jaw muscles.

I think I'm more the method acting school.

Crying does not equal good acting.

Luckily, neither in my Tamil nor in my Telugu movies do I have roles that require exaggerated emoting.

For the actor, The Lee Strasberg Notes are an indispensable companion.

An actor definitely has to be in the past a well as the present; an actor must react to past experiences every minute, every second.

I'm not a method actress.

I'm not a method actor. I can't even explain so much what I do.

I am not one of those actors who dwells on the histrionics and the subtext and future text of the character. I deal with the scenes that I'm doing at that specific time, because if I do that, they play in more of a real way.

There's lots of incredible roles out there that I'd love to tackle, but there's a select group of actors I find myself gravitating towards, like Philip Seymour Hoffman or Sean Penn or Daniel Day-Lewis - real transformational actors.

I think that different actors go about their preparation differently, but when it comes to acting, I use my imagination.

The worst acting is about imitation.

Meisner technique was different than anything I'd ever experienced. It's a really great way to be accountable to your craft and to yourself, but also it takes that kind of focus and dedication to learn anything.