Lake Bell Quotes

We had a dialogue coach. She helped us with our T's.

In terms of drama school, what that will give you that you won't necessarily learn on a film set is the technical ability - ie, projecting your voice and stage craft.

I had had a huge background in the nuance of the accent because I went to drama school in England for four years.

There is a lot of hype about drama school, I think. If you're an actor in England, that's just the way to get into it but I've been so incredibly lucky in that I was brought up in to it. I still might go to drama school, if I wanted to do theater work, definitely. It's a completely different type of training.

John Cassavetes was a year ahead of me but we met there. What you do when you are at a school for drama, you do a play as opposed to a final. Anyone who wanted to come could just come. So he came, and I can't remember the name of the play, of course, it was a long time ago.

I think I might have been a more interesting actor, had more of a career earlier on, if I had more formal preparation. When I see something ten years later that I was in I think, 'Boy, would I love to do that over.'

I didn't act professionally before going to drama school. I don't know if I had the confidence. I didn't think I'd get in when I first auditioned for drama school, and then I did.

I went to drama school in the U.K., where we did endless Chekov plays.

'Hollyoaks' is where I learnt a lot of the craft, being in front of a camera six days a week. That's certainly an experience you don't get in drama school. It invites you to be comfortable in front of the camera.

From there I did a one year theatre acting course in Fife, and then three years of drama school in London.

When I arrived in L.A., I assumed I'd be able to put on the American accent. It proved difficult, so I had six months working with a dialect coach, and it's become a habit.

There are lots of people in the world who do have the advantage of going to a good drama school and just decide that they want to be actors. There's nothing wrong with an untrained actor; they have to get their training somehow, they have to learn.

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.

The riskiest thing I have done in my fifties is to do a Polish accent for a new film. I had a great time working on it and two wonderful people to guide me. A dialect coach that I have known for thirty years and a Polish actor.

I did get a degree in theater and took some voice-over classes.

I started out as a lousy actress and have remained one.

I think that classical theater training is just one aspect of acting. I think that experience of having worked with a lot of text can help you as an actor. It gives you the ability to tackle a larger than life character in parts that require it.

I'm quite fluent in Telugu now, but there's a difference between talking and dubbing. While dubbing, the diction must be in sync with the emotion in the scene and would impact my performance.

I had a wonderful, an incredible dialect coach, Brendan Gunn, from Belfast, who has worked with Brad Pitt and Daniel Day Lewis, and me.

I have worked really hard to reach where I am - I worked hard on my Hindi and diction because I am a Parsi and Hindi is not my strong point, and I've also learnt Tamil and Telugu because I want to get my lines right. I want to be known as a performer.

Dialect was my biggest fear. So, I spent a long time working with dialect coaches just trying to get American down. I think it's very important and very easy to misinterpret.

The headmistress was a very well-respected theater teacher. She taught me what stage left and stage right were, what a director was, and what all these things meant, which was something I had no concept of. She sent me off to drama school, at age 18, and I stayed there for three years. Before I knew it, I was working on a TV show.

All the craft skills that I have, I feel like I developed and honed in drama school. It's the most important thing for me.

A lot of the best acting training I had was in junior high and high school. We had very demanding directors and did real plays. You put our plays up against any theater troupe of any age, and they usually did pretty damn well.

I come from a little bit of a theatrical background. I started that way. I don't have a tremendous body of work or anything, but I went to drama school. And so, to get to do a piece where the characters get to talk a lot, and that isn't just about the spectacle or the set piece, or is simply visual or movement based. It was really wonderful for me, and juicy and exciting.