Lennie James Quotes

If I'm serious, yes, I'd like to have done what Shakespeare did... to act and write. You learn so much from acting. One of our great writers, Alan Bennett, does both supremely well. When I write a story, I tend to speak it aloud as I'm writing it.

Acting is probably what I'm best at, but there are certain stories kind of rattling around in my head that I like the idea of developing over time.

I always enjoyed writing. I did playlets in high school, I did radio shows in college. That's one of the reasons I went down to Second City, because you could do acting and writing.

I've been interested in the writing/directing thing and really fell into acting by complete accident.

I dreamed of being an actress when I was a little kid because you don't know then that the writer writes everything the actor is saying. But as I got older, I got into college and became more aware that writing is another option, and I started getting into it, too.

Lots of things are hard work, but I think writing, for me, after I started acting at 13 years old. I like writing now much more than I do acting only because, well, partly because the scripts that are offered are junk.

If I have a long period of time away from acting, I tend to write.

There's a bunch of stuff I want to act in and also create.

I thought I wanted to be a playwright because I was interested in stories and telling stories.

The real joy is in constructing a sentence. But I see myself as an actor first because writing is what you do when you are ready and acting is what you do when someone else is ready.

Even as an actor, I think like a storyteller. My parents raised us to look at the script.

I'm still auditioning and doing other movie parts, but I really like the developing and the writing. You have more control over your destiny.

I'm more of a writer than an actor, and I used to say that I'm mostly an improviser, though I haven't improvised in awhile.

I love novels, but I'm not a novelist. I'm just a dramatist, which means I write lines for actors. That's all I have ever wanted to do.

Writing is as big a part of my career as acting is, financially and time wise. So, yeah, I love it. That's all I wanted to do since I was young was be a writer. So that and acting are the two most important aspects of my career.

I love stories and acting is a way to tell stories. Everyone assumes I've done it my whole life.

Acting is contained - you act for three months, then leave it - but writing is the act of creation. Writing is dangerous.

I actually wanted to be a writer long before I wanted to be an actor.

I think everyone's intentions are to become a performer at first. But by the time I was in high school and college, I discovered that I liked writing and that I was probably a little better at it.

When I was about 12, I spent the summer writing four plays on my dad's old typewriter for a school play competition. And I wrote little comic bits at secondary school and at university.

I started as a writer; I started writing when I was little. The acting and directing was an outgrowth of my desire to tell stories.

There's nothing more thrilling than watching great actors say things that you wrote and bring them to life.

I think visually... so, even when I'm writing a play, I'm envisioning it.

The biggest impact that acting and theater had was, of course, stage presence, but it also had a big impact on my writing.

I really wanted to create some of my own characters, then it became wanting to act the parts, then it sort of grew from there because I really enjoyed doing it.