To me, acting is simple. People put other things in front of it, but it's staying in truth.
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.
I was certainly a better actor after my five years in Hollywood. I had learned to be natural - never to exaggerate. I found I could act on the stage in just the same way as I had acted in a studio: using my ordinary voice, eliminating gestures, keeping everything extremely simple.
I'm not into that method acting thing. I just turn up, say my lines and go home.
In Shakespeare, keep it simple. Don't over-inflect. The speech needs to be naturalistic and simple and accessible as much as possible.
I'd rather have a part where you walk into a room and you leave. That's perfect for me.
Everybody has a priority. Mine is simple and clean acting, and my work, irrespective of the industry I am in, will not cater to anything else.
On acting to daughter Isabella Rossellini: Keep it simple. Make a blank face and the music and the story will fill it in.
Every time I am reading actors I can pretty well tell which ones have studied with Meisner. It is because they are honest and simple and don't lay on complications that aren't necessary.
The hardest thing to do as an actor is to be simplistic, and to just be.
People seem to be interested in me. So I try to keep my acting pretty simple.
[Ed Lauter] was an actor's actor. I love working with that class of actor. You know, they come in, they do it, no bullshit. There's no artifice, there's no fanciness, they're just honest and tough and direct.
Working with Katherine Hepburn, she said to me, "Don't act." She said, "Read the lines. Just be. Just speak the lines." I said, "Okay." She said, "You look good. You got a good pair of shoulders, you got a good head, good face."
Zhang is a friend of mine: he said forget about acting and just do normal things in the movie.
Actors are embracing a new aesthetic, which is leaning more toward truthful and simple and direct, as opposed to what we would normally call sitcom acting.
I think all those actors from that generation, like Bogart - they were wonderful actors. They didn't act. They just came on and they did it, and the characters were wonderful.
