Thornton Wilder Quotes

As an actor in the theater you're taught that you never play a bad guy. You have to love who you are. You can't say, "Oh, I'm a bad guy." How do you play that?

I'm still trying to write. I wrote a play a few years ago, so I'm trying to start writing again. The play was called The Commons Of Pensacola. It was at MTC [Manhattan Theatre Club] with Sarah Jessica Parker and Blythe Danner. It was kind of like a riff on Ruth Madoff.

Remember that you are in actor in a play of such a kind that the author chooses...For this is your duty, to act well the part that is given to you; but to select the part belongs to another.

You obviously don't have to be a murderer to play a murderer or you don't have to be a dictator to play a dictator. So, you're an actor. You come up with whatever you come up with to play that part.

I feel very secure about the role of the actor in the future. They need us, because stories are about people.

Actors want to do Shakespeare again and again, or want to do Hamlet. When you hear one guy do Hamlet and another guy do it, it's going to be a whole different experience.

Everyone has a different interpretation of characters we know and love from Shakespeare, from 'Miller'. There's specific things about them that are written that are kind of the fingerprints of the first person who played that role, and so I like to think of it as a road map.

We are not brain surgeons. We are not curing cancer. We are not finding the next cure for Alzheimer's. We are simply and merely entertainment. We take on and wear the masks of characters. That's what we're paid to do.

That's where everything starts, as an actor: you've gotta have great writing and great character development, and then you have really great materials to work from.

Acting in particular is a fun job when you have a good script. I don't know about acting when you don't have a great script. I'm gonna say that's not a great job, it's kind of a dumb job. But when you have a good part in a good script, it's the best job, in a way.

It's funny how that comes up, because sometimes I'll write something and I'll think, I don't know if that's a film or a play, and then other things I feel very strongly about them just being plays - they feel very theatrical to me.

If I was playing Carrie, I might have done differently but I felt like as my character. I mean, I'm definitely bringing myself to the role but I wanted to pay homage. I hope I did. We'll see.

In rehearsals I get so completely wrapped up with the reality that's occurring on stage that by the time the play has opened I'm not usually quite as aware of the distinctions between what I'd intended and the result. There are many ways of getting the same result.

As actors, we want to challenges ourselves and put ourselves in different situations to see how we react and deliver a performance.

I would compare it to an actor. I drive myself into the character that later on is in the ring.

I consider it an actor going to work with other actors. It's not a competitive sport, it's not to outact anybody else, sorta thing, you can be a bad actor but you don't outact anybody, you just bring your character as best as you can.

I would tell any actress that the trick is to play all the female characters on your show, and then all the men are yours.

I realize how much I rely on the actors to really know the lines because I tend to forget what they are exactly, even though I've written them. I don't have them memorized. But when it's going well, there is that point where the actor starts to know more about the character than I do.

In the creative process there is the father, the author of the play; the mother, the actor pregnant with the part; and the child, the role to be born.

The most interesting part of filming is what the actors do. That's the primary link between the story and the audience.

Actors are the jockeys of literature. Others supply the horses, the plays, and we simply make them run.

In the story, I think as an actor you're just trying to fit into the world.

I'm an actor. I'm trying to be the character and do what they're doing.

The performance is created by the director. The actor is the material. And I think that has to be true.

...as an actor there's nothing better than a great moody moment to play with nothing to say. It's so much easier to do because you can really get inside your head.