John Lithgow Quotes

An amateur can be great in front of the camera, but you need an education to get on stage where you have full control as an actor.

I would absolutely recommend for actors to start in the theater because it establishes a foundation in your craft that you can build off of.

I think if you're an actor, then you can work on stage - but if you've never done it before, you're going to have picked up a few things that you're going to need to change when you're working on stage.

My advice has always been to study the craft of acting if you want to be an actor. There are many great schools that teach acting. NYU being one of them.

For me, there's nothing more valuable as an actor, or better way to learn, than getting to perform in front of a live audience, no matter where you are. Whether it's on Broadway, in Florida, or doing a tour.

As an actor just learning the craft, you literally do a scene with Jimmy Gandolfini, and you walk away a better actor.

For me, it was much more important to continue to learn my craft as an actor and get a bit of flesh on the bones.

Film acting is really the trick of doing moments. You rarely do a take that lasts more than 20 seconds. You really earn your spurs acting onstage. I needed to do that for myself. I would hate to say at the end of everything that I never did a stage play.

A stage actor has to be 10% aware of the audience as he's performing.

A lot of people are surprised to hear that an actor studied for two or three years. They take the craft for granted and wanna just wake up and be an actor.

My advice to young actors is probably to do some theatre; definitely do that. I keep running into these actors who have never been on stage, and it's invaluable for an actor. What you will learn about yourself is huge.

I trained as a stage actor and was given a lot of technical tools to play with.

Most actors nowadays are models turned actors. That's why a lot of young actors are terrible. You have to learn how to act. It is not something that you can just do.

In England, when we're at drama school, we spend a lot of time learning the craft from playwrights and stage actors, who are very well trained in the basics of acting because they need to get it right the first time - you can't have second or third takes when you're in front of a live audience, unlike in film.

The best way to learn how to work with actors is to have had experience of trying to act yourself - it will teach you humility if nothing else.

I thought acting was all about natural instinct but I've realised, through working with so many talented actors on 'Wild Swans' and 'Run,' that I can see the training. That's why I am back at drama school.

Doing Shakespeare certainly makes you a better actor.

I've had probably way too many acting classes, and you try to sort of shed - I think over a period of time, you'll shed what doesn't stick with you, and you'll hang onto those things that do.

I trained at the Lee Strasberg Institute at Tisch, which is a huge foundation for young actors. They teach you their methods and give you the sense that acting is much more tangible than most people think. I think there's a mysticism of what acting is, in the fact that it's this ungraspable, spur-of-the-moment thing that nobody can understand.

Craft comes into acting later rather than sooner. I was somebody who had to learn through a process - a natural actor doesn't need to.

The rehearsal is where it all happens for an actor.

Ninety percent of the preparation we do as actors is just jive. It doesn't do anything.

It's not like every actor needs to train, but an actor will either develop their process through training or through working.

Actors and writers need to come back to the theater because it's a place where you can learn. You have to pay your dues, and people who haven't paid their dues in the theater, I think, have a hard time creating a whole career.

You can't learn how to act; you can only really learn it through experience and practice and really finding what your voice is and what you want to be as an actor.