Performance Psychology Quotes

I've always remembered something Sanford Meisner, my acting teacher, told us. When you create a character, it's like making a chair, except instead of making someting out of wood, you make it out of yourself. That's the actor's craft - using yourself to create a character.

You know I need that cockiness, the self-belief, arrogance, swagger, whatever you want to call it, I need that on the golf course to bring the best out of myself. So you know once I leave the golf course, you know that all gets left there.

Many books have been written about what the X-factor is, what separates people who win big matches versus those who struggle. Some of it's innate, but there's a piece of it that's learned, embracing those moments.

I do figure every angle of a guy I'm acting - but not consciously 'til afterward.

I don't think about the characters I choose to play, analytically or consciously.

If I can't get a mental image from the song, I won't sing it.

There are some people, by the way, that associate a certain amount of visualization with the performance of music. Those are people that really are not centrally concerned only with music, the traditional things.

For the actor, The Lee Strasberg Notes are an indispensable companion.

Golf is a bloodless sport-if you don't count ulcers.

How does my music connect to an audience? That is just a complete mystery to me.

The audience creates its own personality, I've noticed, in the first five minutes. They will either be generous, funny, silly, withholding, academic, analytical, grudging. And I'm fascinated with how that gets constructed, because it happens right away.

If you're playing someone who's impeded by fear, or shyness, or has whatever dysfunction your character might have, you have to achieve the dysfunction first, imaginatively, in order to play someone who is trying to negotiate their way out of it.

For me, the acting part - and I have to say it makes me a little worried about my own psychological make-up - is that I just love to hide in other characters. I don't like to get up in front of people and talk as Kathy Baker. But as soon as you say 'action,' I'm lost in that character.

I don't slot actors into the image of a character that's already built. I build characters by listening to the voice and the story inside the heart of each actor. Art and life are linked, and expressed through my actors.

I have to do some mental gymnastics as an actor sometimes, to remember not to let certain things in.

You're always working in the movie. Never was I me, and never have I been me, nor was he him. We were the two characters. But the character that I was playing was informed by my DNA, looking at him informed by his.

I spent the nights before the Jets' two biggest games last year - for the AFL championship and the Super Bowl - with girls. But I don't consider that bad or foolish of me... The night before a game, I prepare myself both mentally and physically for the next day. I think a ballplayer has to be relaxed to play well; and if that involves being with a girl that night, he should do it.

I remember, even when I first started out in NXT and the girls wanted to do certain moves in matches, and I remember, our coach would tell us, 'You don't have to do that. You don't have to learn that. This is what is required of you.' And it was a lot of hair pulling, a lot of slapping. And it just wasn't seen as being taken seriously.

I've got a theory with each character I play. Regardless of the actions that they do, I, as Jake, have to like these people. And I have to say, 'I wouldn't mind hanging out with this guy for an hour and a half.'

I'm one of those athletes, I compete better for coaches that I have a lot of love and respect for.

I've always liked extreme performers; I don't think I am one, but my mentality is in line with that.

Emotion is more than just anger. When I am performing, I need emotion, but I need control, too. Emotion drives the best performance and is necessary, but it must be controlled. I believe Fedor [Emelianenko] does that. I do too. We may look different in how we do it, but we both do it.

You don't really ever think you're that crazy person you're playing.

I like to be absorbed in what my character's doing.

Just let the wardrobe do the acting.