Spontaneous Acting Quotes

I don't like to intellectualize about my acting. I don't sit around and study the pages of a script over and over again.

TV acting is so extremely intimate, because of the peculiar involvement of the viewer with the completion or "closing" of the TV image, that the actor must achieve a great degree of spontaneous casualness that would be irrelevant in movie and lost on the stage. For the audience participates in the inner life of the TV actor as fully as in the outer life of the movie star. Technically, TV tends to be a close-up medium. The close-up that in the movie is used for shock is, on TV, a quite casual thing.

You can't really plan with acting!

In a way, I don't create anything; I just open myself to the character, and the character takes over. Of course, I'm aware of it, and I'm driving it, but I don't try to control it. If I try to control it, it goes wrong.

Improv acting is not just saying the lines but connecting with the other actor.

'The State' had never done improv. We used to go over scripts for weeks and argue about every joke. But I don't know how we would have scripted 'Reno.'

Things can change on a daily basis in television. You can be introduced to aspects of your character that you had no idea existed because they didn't exist a week before. The next week it might be taken away from you in some way that you can't control.

I'm just an instinctive actress, I've never had a lesson in my life.

I had acting teachers, and one of the things that was encouraged was to keep it fresh, to be spontaneous. That's the magic of film often.

I don't act, anyway. The stuff is all injected as we go along. My pictures are made without script or written directions of any kind.

Marty [Scorsese] knows that when an improvised moment comes out of a real situation, it's gonna have more life and more going on than anything you can imagine and that's how the character can become the story

I don't want actors to know anything. The more they are lost, the better they play.

I don't prepare for any role. I go on the sets and do it.

I never went to school for acting; it just comes to me. I never practice. I read the script, I'll memorize it. I don't even practice the acting. I'll just do it the day, and it will just come to me.

I'll drive down the street, and I'll practice improv. I will sit there at a red light and see two guys talking to each other, and I will just start playing both characters. I can't hear them, but I can see their mouths moving, so I'll just put words in their mouths.

I grew up in the theater, and you can't improvise Shakespeare and Ibsen. You have to speak the language. But obviously, in a contemporary film, there's often room for improvisation and spontaneous things that happen. As long as I know what I'm trying to achieve in the scene, and when something comes up, I know that the response is genuine, I'm comfortable. That's really how I build everything.

Unfortunately, the public might not know that we get a script usually two days before shooting. So sometimes I'm shooting an episode and don't even know how it's going to end because I haven't read that yet.

I think good actors are born with a kind of native gift. When you study too much with an acting teacher, that gets taken away. You lose your sense of spontaneity.

I'm in all my films, I can't help it. I just jam myself in there if there's a space.

I like to give the actors freedom to take what we have on the page and improve on it. And they do that quite a bit.

Improv has been immensely beneficial to me as both an actor and a writer.

I am a natural actor. I try to keep it spontaneous as far as possible. That is my mantra.

I think as an actress, I prefer having a character on the page. It allows you to be more invested in actually creating a whole person. It's easier when you're not trying to come up with your next line on the spot.

One of the cool things about getting to audition for things on short notice is that it teaches you to memorize efficiently. So I've never been afraid of getting text down quickly.

I'm the sort of actor who doesn't really prep a lot - I don't do a lot of research for parts. I just go for it, and I usually pull through.