Yes, I sing songs about relationships on the edge, relationships of all kinds, but remember I did not write them all, ... They are not all based on my experiences. Years ago, I wrote with Dennis Walker and Bruce Bromberg, who were 10 years older and divorced two or three times. They had great senses of humor, which is where lines like 'a boatload of lawyers just sank' came from. It is their stories on Strong Persuader, my breakthrough album from 1986. Sneaking out the window, 'Porch Light,' they are not my songs or lines. So, my life is not as miserable as some of the music makes it out to be. My wife Sue and I have been married for 15 years. She's an actor, but Sue gets the credit she deserves on some of my songs.
|
A good director creates an environment, which gives the actor the encouragement to fly.
|
After my father had seen me in five or six things, he said, Son, your mother and I really enjoyed your recent film, and I must say that you're a lot like John Wayne. And I said, How so? And he said, Well, you're exactly the same in all your roles. Now, as a modern American actor, that's not what you want to hear. But for a guy who watched John Wayne movies and grew up in Iowa, it's a sterling compliment.
|
My parents were involved in everything I did. They were showbiz people themselves. My dad was an actor. They were parents; they did what parents are supposed to do.
|
Arnold Schwarzenegger's publicist told USA Today that the actor has not ruled out running for governor of California, saying that he will make a decision soon. Reportedly Arnold needs that time to learn how to pronounce 'gubernatorial.'
|
When an actor comes to me and wants to discuss his character, I say, 'It's in the script.' If he says, 'But what's my motivation, ' I say, 'Your salary.'
|
An actor who knows his business ought to be able to make the London telephone directory sound enthralling.
|
I hate it when people pray on the screen. It's not because I hate praying, but whenever I see an actor fold his hands and look up in the spotlight, I'm lost. There's only one other thing in the movies I hate as much, and that's sex. You just can't get in bed or pray to God and convince me on the screen.
|
While we look to the dramatist to give romance to realism, we ask of the actor to give realism to romance.
|
We live everything as it comes, without warning, like an actor going on cold. And what can life be worth if the first rehearsal for life is life itself? That is why life is always a sketch. No sketch is not quite the right word, because a sketch is an outline of something, the groundwork for a picture, whereas the sketch that is our life is a sketch of nothing, an outline with no picture.
|
I trained for three years at drama school to be an actor - not a celebrity.
|
Celebrity is death --- celebrity -- that's the worst thing that can happen to an actor.
|
As soon as I suspect a fine effect is being achieved by accident I lose interest. I am not interested...in unskilled labor. ...The scientific actor is an even worker. Any one may achieve on some rare occasion an outburst of genuine feeling, a gesture of imperishable beauty, a ringing accent of truth; but your scientific actor knows how he did it. He can repeat it again and again and again. He can be depended on.
|
I think I may have become an actor to hide from myself. You can escape into a character.
|
An actor is totally vulnerable. His total personality is exposed to critical judgment - his intellect, his bearing, his diction, his whole appearance. In short, his ego.
|
Intelligence: I was asked tonight why I refuse to have truck with intellectuals after business hours. But of course I won t. 1. I am not an intellectual. Two minutes talk with Aldous Huxley, William Glock, or any of the New Statesman crowd would expose me utterly. 2. I am too tired after my day's work to man the intellectual palisade. 3. When my work is finished I want to eat, drink, smoke, and relax. 4. I don't know very much, but what I do know I know better than anybody, and I don't want to argue about it. I know what I think about an actor or an actress, and am not interested in what anybody else thinks. My mind is not a bed to be made and re-made.
|
As an actor I think sometimes producers need a little bit of encouragement to see you in a particular role, they may not have as much imagination as you would expect.
|
Change begets change. Nothing propagates so fast. If a man habituated to a narrow circle of cares and pleasures, out of which he seldom travels, step beyond it, though for never so brief a space, his departure from the monotonous scene on which he has been an actor of importance would seem to be the signal for instant confusion. The mine which Time has slowly dug beneath familiar objects is sprung in an instant; and what was rock before, becomes but sand and dust.
|
The first movie I appeared in was Carry On Cowboy, though not as an actor. I was just riding horses.
|
He's very intuitive about human behavior, combined with a wonderful understanding of the scientific/fantasy perception - an understanding of what we can perceive beyond what we admit to. But he doesn't depart from the human being. That means you get to use everything you are and more as an actor.
|
On being an actor .nothing more than a worker in a service occupation . It's like being a waiter or a gas station attendant, but I'm waiting on 6 million people in a week if I'm lucky.
|
The stage lost a fine actor, just as science lost an acute reasoner, when he became a specialist in crime.
|
An actor rides in a bus or railroad train; he sees a movement and applies it to a new role. The whole garment in which the actor hides himself is made of small externals of observation fitted to his conception of a role.
|
When I come up against a director who has a concept that I don't agree with, or maybe I just haven't thought of it or whatever, I'd be more prone to go with them than my own because I want to be out of control as an actor, I want them to have the control,
|
The mug is a tool. My ace in the hole. To have looks is the bonus on top of what motivates me to be an actor. Not to realize they're an asset would be counterproductive to the cause; they serve the common good.
|
The basic essential of a great actor is that he loves himself in acting.
|
I'm an assistant storyteller. It's like being a waiter or a gas-station attendant, but I'm waiting on six million people a week, if I'm lucky. On being an actor
|
An agent is a person who is sore because an actor gets 90% of what they make.
|
A new kind of award has been added -- the deathbed award. It is not an award of any kind. Either the recipient has not acted at all, or was not nominated, or did not win the award the last few times around. It is intended to relieve the guilty conscience of the Academy members and save face in front of the public. The Academy has the horrible taste to have a star, choking with emotion, present this deathbed award so that there can be no doubt in anybody's mind why the award is so hurriedly given. Lucky is the actor who is too sick to watch the proceedings on television.
|
... most of all the actor will love the boys and girls, the men and women, who sit in the cheapest seats, in the very last row of the top gallery. They have given more than they can afford to come. In the most self-effacing spirit of fellowship they are listening to catch every word, watching to miss no slightest gesture or expression. To save his life the actor cannot help feeling these nearest and dearest. He cannot help wishing to do his best for them. He cannot help loving them best of all.
|