Acting Advice Quotes

I was taught by a lot of great comedy writers to go for the reality in a role, and the comedy will come through.

I was in a movie called 'Before & After' with Meryl Streep. I was edited out of the movie, but no one told me. I think I was 18 or 19 years old. I sat across from her and asked her every question about acting. I completely embarrassed myself.

I was working with Bryan Cranston in 'All the Way.' We were about to make an entrance together - I was Hoover, he was LBJ - and he says to me, 'You should play the brother in 'Better Call Saul.' I was like 'What?' and it was time to go on. I'm doing the scene, and I can't think of what Hoover's supposed to say.

You ask my advice about acting? Speak clearly, don't bump into the furniture and if you must have motivation, think of your pay packet on Friday.

[Malipiero's advice to Casanova.] If you wish your audience to cry, you must shed tears yourself, but if you wish to make them laugh you must contrive to look as serious as a judge.

Alan Rickman told me to do a play, so I did. Because when Alan Rickman tells you do something, you go and do it.

I'm not in the business of becoming famous. And that's the advice I give to younger aspiring actors. Work onstage and do the little roles. In the end it's not important to be seen. It's important to do. There's a lot of disappointment in this business, but my family keeps me grounded.

I remember something Clint Eastwood told me early on. I don't remember how old I was when you told me this, Dad. But you said, "As an actor, I never went back to my trailer. I always hung out on set and learned." That stuck with me.

I don't offer advice to actors only because I've seen actors become successful through ways that would never even occur to me or that wouldn't work for me. But this has worked for me: Never memorizing a scene.

I remember I had an actor friend - a close friend from college - Anthony Zerbe. He sent me a telegram before I started my first movie, 'Cisco Pike.' It said, 'Have a good time. Ignore the camera.' That was the extent of my training.

If you're going to go to an audition, you don't want to go in trying to force yourself into some archetype that has been thought up by a director and translated by a casting director.

I'm no relation to Lillian or Dorothy Gish. Not even way back. But when I first became interested in acting, I wrote a letter to Lillian Gish. She wrote back, discouraging me from entering the business.

I want to dip my foot in some acting. And most definitely want to mentor upcoming artists and give them the wisdom that was given to me.

Whenever you're playing somebody who is, by all accounts, rotten, don't focus on the rotten stuff. That stuff will take care of itself. It's already in the script; the audience is already experiencing it without you having to add an extra feel of evil. Just play them like regular people.

[On being asked, 'Did you ever say that an actress needs to be able to laugh and to cry and that when you need to laugh you think of your sex life and when you need to cry you think of your sex life?':] No.

Not many people know my father was an actor. He was the Artful Dodger in 'Oliver!,' and was in a film called 'Frauds,' too. It's interesting talking to him about acting, how much you can get turned down, and how not to take that as a discouragement. It's nice to have that element to relate to for us both.

I remember my very first audition for a film. I was in Seattle. They were taping the session, and I just went crazy. The director finally said, 'Zoe, what are you doing? The camera's right here. Just talk to me.' And it took that director saying that to me to change everything.

Dustin Hoffman was the greatest. He had so much information to give and he mesmerized me. He really feels for actors who are just starting out and remembers his early days like they were yesterday.

The camera lens or the television camera is still just a proscenium arch. And as a great old character actor once said to me, wherever you're acting, you reach up and take hold of the proscenium arch, and you pull it down around your shoulders.

An actor said recently that, unless you're a parent, you shouldn't play a parent in a film. I don't know who said it, but I disagree. I understand that maybe there are aspects that you don't understand, or maybe this actor or actress had a really strong recent experience with having their first or second or third born child. I don't know. As a dad, I get that. I get that there is no love like it. But, at the same time, love is love.

When I was coming up, everybody wanted to be Tom Hanks. There was always Robert De Niro and Al Pacino - they were the heavily dramatic stuff. I always had a foot in both camps. The hardest thing was to resist the advice to be like someone else. It took me a while to figure that out.

Craig T. Nelson, who played my grandfather on 'Parenthood,' gave me a lot of advice at the end of the show. I'm really insecure, and I get uncomfortable with things, and he gave me a lot of advice about that.

I think the best advice I'd say to any actor when you do comedy is play it straight.

Nobody ever said, "Well if you want to be in movies, you should go to L.A." Everybody else was going to New York. So I went to New York with them. And then I was like, "How am I supposed to get a movie?"

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.