Cameron Monaghan Quotes

There's no shame in stealing - any actor who says he doesn't is lying. You steal from everything.

I've always gone to see all kinds of shows and stole what I could, as we all do. We see an artist and hear a song and think, 'I bet I could sing that song. I'll put that in my show.'

What I've learned is that it's okay to take from heroes, such as Debussy, but it has to be filtered through my own personality so that ultimately it's me.

The thing is when you play a character it's the persona you bring across from a book to film, or book to script to film. If I play Frank Sinatra, there's gonna be things I do in a movie that Frank might not have done, but it's the personality that comes across.

Somebody told me long ago that in acting, it's okay to steal, just steal from the best.

They wanted me to play third like Brooks so I did play like Brooks - Mel Brooks.

My songs are like cheap Neil Young copies.

Spielberg is our hero. For him to make a nod to 'Godzilla' just before we make our movie is like getting the king to acknowledge you at dinner.

I'm often compared to Alan Rickman. I wish.

There's a lot of people I take stuff from, and it's mostly bad guys in movies.

It would be impossible to find an actor to portray Om Puri, so I wouldn't even attempt it.

I definitely wanted to pay homage to what he did and use his performance in the first one as a foundation. But, I had to make it my own. I couldn't sit there and try to imitate Michael Clarke Duncan. I think that would have been disastrous. I had to make it my own. I tried to take as many nuances that he had with the character and utilize them as best I could, while creating a character that was unique to me. That's going to happen, no matter what.

I really do think that if you're doing your job right, you're never gonna be what the other actor was, but you can be influenced by his intelligence and his choices.

I copied everything I did in Galaxy Quest from Bill Paxton in Aliens, I owe him some credit.

I wasn't trying to do a play or do what Kevin Spacey did. I was trying to do my own thing with it.

All writers are magpies, right? We're always stealing bits from different places and then weaving them into our little nest.

The closer a part is to you, the harder it is to play. Anything else is just imitation. If I'm playing a Russian countess, I get the hat, the accent, the outrageousness. Easy. Playing a murderess? Perfect.

I borrow bits from everyone.

I think that's something that people feel that I do really well; I don't mind it, because ultimately I think the characters I play move people, and who wouldn't want to move people?

I played Othello, but I didn't sit around thinking how Laurence Olivier did it when he played it. That wouldn't do me any good.

I don't have to talk to a surgeon to play a surgeon, you know what I mean?

If you try to create someone else's performance, it becomes a facsimile of a facsimile.

I'm really not a songwriter, so if I hear a song, I feel it and like it, I'll do it. But I'll make it the way I want to hear it.

It's intimidating any time to have a piece of art that someone else created, and that person says, 'Let's see what you created based on what I created.'

During 'Manchurian Candidate' - that role originated with Laurence Harvey, and I studied everything he did. I would never be able to reproduce that performance, but I got a lot of ideas from watching it.