Nick Swardson Quotes

Every role is challenging in its own way, but the most challenging roles are the ones that are badly written - then it's completely up to you to come up with something that is interesting to the story and myself as an actor.

It's part of the actor's job to show up with a head full of steam, to have their own take on this. So that way, you're not relying on, 'OK, tell me how to do it.'

I always find that it's when a script is not detailed, then I have to do more work as an actor.

I tend not to have any references to anything. I just jump into the script in front of me. If you reference too much, you have no idea if the performances are right.

In my early 20s, I didn't even know what the Groundlings was. I had no idea. But I know how to break down a script and work on the character.

When someone pitches a joke for a character that is just perfect, and you can imagine that actor reading that line at your table read or on the set, it's like the sound of a snap snapping into place.

See, that's the thing: I'm not one of those actors who thinks, 'God, I've got to improvise and make it my own.' No, my first job as an actor is to take what's written and make it work. And then, if they want me to improvise, I'll do that.

A lot of actors are like, 'Why do I do this? My character wouldn't do this? This doesn't make sense.' And in a comedy, you kind of just need to walk into the door.

All the best performers bring to their role something more, something different than what the author put on paper. That's what makes theatre live. That's why it persists.

Literature is an easier way to study acting, because then you can take any kind of spin.

Many times, when a director reads a script and wants somebody who says 'Far out', then they let me do what I want with it and that's usually more interesting for an actor.

Stage acting is for me the basic form of acting. If you make films all the time, you have so few possibilities to rehearse. And it's important to rehearse, because it gives you the possibility to try things which are not good!

Acting is just common sense. It isn't hard if you put yourself aside and just do what the writer wrote.

All actors bring something unexpected to the role because they have to translate what's on the page and make a real character out of the black-and-white text that's there in the script.

Acting is really about showing up that day and telling the writers what you feel like saying.

I use a method approach to all my sitcom work.

Honestly, I'm a shallow performer. I just go with the text and feel my way around it. There's not a whole lot of shaping.

A lot of actors, whatever movie you're working on, you make up a back story just for your own, to work off, even if the audience doesn't have it revealed to them. I think it's important that the audience makes up their own mind.

Many plays - certainly mine - are like blank checks. The actors and directors put their own signatures on them.

Sometimes you read a script, and it's like, 'You'll improv, and this is just a blueprint of what the scene could be,' and that's never a good sign. And it's never encouraging as an actor to take that on, really.

Acting is not just impersonating your character.

Oh, 'Sports Night' was tough because 'Sports Night' was... Well, you know, it's like Mamet. It's Sorkin. And I didn't realize that you had to immediately be off of the other actors' last line in their dialogue.

I have done theatre, and I enjoy the process of smaller films a lot more. When I do such films, there are certain things which I get to do which are untapped. The scenes give me the liberty to play and mould the character in accordance to the director's mindset.

I just want to work on good scripts.

The cool thing about doing a play is that the final interpretation of a piece is turned over to the actors.