We actors can't say every line as if it has weight, but what we want to do is be true to the meaning of each line, whatever it is. Even the lines that are throwaway may come back later.
'Full House' was the first time I had ever been in front of a live audience. I said a line I had rehearsed with my mom, and they laughed. It was wild. To have that energy of the live audience was like, Whaaat? Feeding off that live audience was, to a 4 or 5 year old, a high.
Actors need to know why they're saying what they're saying, more than just learning their lines.
There was a gap of seven years between the first and second Dracula movies. In the second one as everybody knows, I didn't speak, because I said I couldn't say the lines.
Acting isn't that hard, really. I mean, I think that people make a big deal about it, but you just kind of try to say your lines naturally.
You really have to take your time; you have to know your character and your scene. The line you are about to say comes from the moment right before. It's not what's said, it's what is in between the spaces, it's what's in between the lines; that is the most important to play.
Woody Allen likes to do a lot of master shots. He likes to get the whole thing in one take, and so you could be going along doing a scene, and then the next to last line, all of a sudden, you stumble, and you have to go back to first base.
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.
On my last two days of 'Young and the Restless,' I had 120-something pages of dialogue. My last two days.
As an actor, I've always been interested in making sure I can perform the role and the lines in the way the writer intended.
Reading great dialogue as an actor is such a rare privilege.
When I am making a film, I know what to do in front of a camera. What frightens me are the scenes with dialogue. Sometime they really want me to speak perfectly and I don't like that.
I think I do have a way of predicting - not always accurately - what is a nerve-wracking day for actors, what may be a difficult scene or a difficult moment, how small - and it may be down to one line - a thing maybe that is upsetting or undermining a performance.
I don't worry too much about learning lines per se. The memorization is the easy part for me, usually. For me, it's more about working on the context, back story, intention, motivation, etc. Once that's in place, the lines come pretty naturally.
I find dictating in the mass media particularly good because you're writing for voice anyway; you're writing for people to say a line and, consequently, saying a line through a machine is quite a valid test for the validity of what you're saying.
I'm a technician. I don't go for the get-into-the-role stuff. I read the lines and play the scenes.
When I'm acting, there are moments where I'm thinking, 'I sound like my mom when I say that,' or, 'I sound like my dad when I say that.'
When I watch an actress say a line, I watch how they deliver the lines with gestures.
A lot of the time, as an actor, you don't have the freedom to change what your lines are, and they can often be very unnatural or difficult to portray in a real light.
I have a hard time retaining the lines. Even on set I make mistakes but I'm okay with that.
What I do is just go over and over and over my lines and learn the script so well that I can just be easy and relaxed. That's the way I always work.
I always change my words in everything I do. I make the language fit, because I know the character from the inside out. Often character actors are not in a position to do that, but I do it. I don't change any cue and I never change anybody else's lines, but I make my own words fit my mouth.
Memorizing dialogue has always come easy and quickly to me. My wife Eileen is also very helpful. She gives me choices, and asks me questions, and runs my lines with me.
Hell, I ain't paid to make good lines sound good. I'm paid to make bad lines sound good.
I had a role in 'DodgeBall,' where I played a pirate who played dodge ball. I'd say 80 to 90 percent of my lines were 'Garrr' or 'Arghh.' And it was all about what the quality of your 'Grr-arr' was.
