Camera Acting Quotes

Sometimes you're watching a great film actor, and if you stand 10 feet away from them, you're like, 'God, they're terrible. They're not doing anything.' And then you see the close-up, and it's so nuanced, and so much expression is happening. They were acting for that camera and for no one else.

What I love is a good role. In the theatre, there is just a canon of extraordinary roles, the quality of character is amazing, but I also love working in front of a camera. It was the first one for me; as a kid I was in front of a camera. I feel at home.

I have been taking classes and I'm familiar with stage, but I'm not as familiar with acting on camera.

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.

The experience with 'The Knick' is a singular experience. That experience taught me a lot about acting and about being on camera for extended periods of time to try to create a character arc that travels.

An amateur can be great in front of the camera, but you need an education to get on stage where you have full control as an actor.

You can be in an acting class all you want, but you don't fully learn until you get off that stage and in front of a camera.

My first time acting for camera really was for Steven Spielberg in War Horse. I was trained in theater and I was actually working in theater at the time. I had a small role with the Royal Shakespeare Company, which is a huge prestigious theater company back in England. I honestly thought that was as good as it got.

For my money, when you're doing an on-camera performance, unless it's for something particularly stylised, you are, by and large, striving for naturalism.

People think that unless you become the de-glam girl, who has horrible things happening to her, you're not really acting; all it takes to cry for the camera is some glycerine. Not doing anything is what's difficult; I know a lot of actors who will agree with me.

I feel that doing theater does give you a good grounding to work on camera. The audience is the lens.

I didn't really understand what you did when you went in front of the camera. And then suddenly I just understood it. When you're in a play, you carry the story, but you don't have to do that in film.

Learning about acting for camera is really quite exciting to engage with and deal with.

Generally, there's a lot of ad-lib involved with live TV and things like that, whereas with acting in front of the camera, it was, if you screwed up a line, well, you've got another take, and you also had a script to be able to study, so it wasn't all ad-lib and flying by the seat of your pants, which I like both aspects, actually.