Riz Ahmed Quotes

If the script's good, everything you need is in there. I just try and feel it, and do it honestly. I also don't learn things for auditions, because I feel like it's just a test of memorizing rather than being real. Maybe every other actor would think that was terrible, I don't know. But it seems to have worked for me, so far.

So many actors are not open in front of the camera - they have a persona.

Confidence is the greatest gift for an actor.

One was never taught how to begin at drama school. But all it required was one intake of breath.

Early on, someone had told me, 'You know, the camera can always tell when you're lying.' And, Jesus, that intimidated me. 'The camera can always tell? How am I going to do this?' Until one day I thought, 'Wait a minute, acting is lying. Acting is all about lying.'

When I was starting out, doing guest spots on TV, and even commercials, I would go in with a whole crazy wardrobe and some terrible accent. Obviously, I was doing too much. If you bring too much flavor to it, it's absurd. There's something to just being spontaneous.

What's beautiful about the actual acting class environment is that you can use it to push through everything: push your voice, push your inhibitions, push your fears, push your confidence, push your vulnerability, push your silences.

An orator is a man who says what he thinks and feels what he says.

I always panic on the first day of work. You can do all the Stanislavsky-backstory homework, but when that moment arrives and you are in the clothes, hair, and makeup of somebody else, and you're saying the words created by somebody else - I never know how to do it. It's a complete mystery to me.

I think my concerns are the same as every actor. Can I find this character and make it come to life properly?

Honesty is one part of eloquence. We persuade others by being in earnest ourselves.

If you don't believe in a line, then you come off as the loser.

So many actors get caught up in their technique, and to be honest, I see it really getting in the way. I see them forcing things. I definitely do my best work when I'm free of that. But I think as an actor, I work really hard in preparing the roles.

There's nothing harder than going on TV and saying something that you don't believe. I don't do that anymore.

When you work as an actor, you've got to feel safe even in what appears to be the simplest things.

Trust is the conduit for influence; it's the medium through which ideas travel.

Improv definitely made me a better auditioner, without a doubt. We did do an audition semester in grad school, and that was helpful for those times that you have a script and you have a few days to prepare it, to really work on sides. But the auditions I was doing in New York, if you got it the night before, you were very lucky.

I'm used to being in front of camera and knowing what to think. But if you're asking me to be me, I get very self-conscious. My job isn't to be me. Being an actor, people think you can do a eulogy at a funeral, a speech at a wedding. I find all that very nerve-racking.

Drama school can't make you a brilliant actor, but you can do stuff for three years - you're not going to be fired. You should just go for it all, even the stuff you think is codswallop.

My acting coach I've got here, Richard Lawson, he's been doing good, just telling me to calm down sometimes and just be me.

I can't imagine anything more debilitating, anything more challenging, anything more thrilling than to get on a stage and do any kind of play. It is such a vulnerable place for any actor to be in.

When a performance isn't working, it's usually because the actor is trying to do something and they're not able to express their idea very well. It's a muddled expression.

Personally, I need to learn every word on the page before I go in and audition. I have not mastered the skill of holding pages in my hand and acting with pages in my hand. I find that every time I have to look at the page it takes me completely out of the scene.

The actor already comes with emotions to the scene: fear, the fear of being in front of the camera. It is this fear that spurs the emotion of the scene. I too am afraid; I don't know exactly what I am searching for. On the set, we are all participating in this fear together.

Any acting job that I ever got, I always treated it like I was a neophyte; I didn't know what I was doing, and I was going to work just as hard as I do on my stand-up.