Lance Reddick Quotes

Notes are tricky in an audition, because I find, more often than not, my instinct is right.

My approach to acting is that I am totally intuitive. I read the script and I get it. If I don't get it, I can't do it.

I don't really have choices in the material I get. So I have to make the choices in the way I play the characters.

Always when I directed the play, I was always trying to cast people not who were necessarily like the characters, but people who I felt had the essential component that the character had, some kind of soul for it.

I have had the auditioning process go on for two weeks or three weeks. I am always incredibly anxious. The audition and the wait is definitely the hardest part for me.

Auditions are not a natural environment, and you feel judged, even though everyone is just excited to find the right person.

With acting, I always feel conscious of what I'm doing.

I trained myself, whenever I walk into auditions, to hate everyone in the room.

Musical auditions are always the worst because you have to sing and act, and that's so stressful.

When I choose a role it's either because I recognise the man, or that I'm very curious to know him. If I neither recognise nor know him, then it is better that I don't play him.

I always look for the character that gets into your guts and tells you, 'You have to play this.' You have to be brave enough to let everything else go and let the character guide you. When I read a script, I look for that kind of pull.

The stressful thing about being an actor is, like, you have to kind of audition again and again and again, you know? You go in one time, and you go in again for a director and then again for producers and then again and again and again.

As an actor you have to deliver what the director wants.

Humourists lead... an existence of jumpiness and apprehension. They sit on the edge of the chair of Literature. In the house of Life they have the feeling that they have never taken off their overcoats.

When you audition for things, there's pressure to go in there with a complete performance, and it's kind of unfair because, if you get it, you'll have rehearsal and talk about it, and you'll have plenty of time with the script. So, for me, I really do feel like an audition is a sketch of what you might do.

Actors tend to get in their own way, a lot. A lot of times you will do things that will screw up your audition process. I was very bad at auditioning, and I always went in to it saying ‘God I hope I don’t screw this up.’ But at the same time, the directors are saying, ‘God, I hope this person is the savior.’ You have to remember is that the worst thing that could happen is you don’t get the job you don’t already have.

The trouble with audition process is, when you're an unemployed actor, it's the only time you get to act, and it can be quite fun. If you feel in control of the material and you feel that the people are pleased to see you and are excited by you auditioning for them, it can be a really rewarding process. But it can also be a very humiliating process.

It's hard to maintain a sense of dignity in an audition. I have done so many auditions where I've put it out there and have been met with that kind of blank stare - "Great! Thanks! OK! Great work! Thanks for coming in!" At the door I'm thinking, 'What the hell am I doing with my life?'

I think auditions are set up for failure because they're not really the set experience. There's no time to develop the character. You're just looking at someone... if someone's really good in an audition, sometimes they're not good in the film. It's something you learn when you're doing short films. It's the same way that some people do well at taking tests and some people don't. But when you're on a long-term filmmaking process it's a completely different feeling.

Mine is studying script and being very academic and trying to be important.

Machiavelli is the complete contrary of a machiavellian, since he describes the tricks of power and gives the whole show away. The seducer and the politician, who live in the dialectic and have a feeling and instinct for it, try their best to keep it hidden.

Personally, I don't tend to go into casting sessions. I try not to have a preconceived notion in my head because it just reduces my options or ability to find someone cool.

Movie acting, I later realized, reminds me of contract bridge. Each requires the same concentration, intense short-term memory, and obliviousness to everything else until the last trump is called - or whatever it is they do.

The real drag is trying to fly from country to country, day of show, with all your gear. You get hassled all the time. It's hard trying to keep it together.

When I'm having a rehearsal and there are new guys who come in to try out for the job, I always let my conductor rehearse them. Because I don't want the guy to get bent out of shape, because I walk in.