Actors Anonymous

Sometimes it is painful to be oneself; at other times it seems impossible to escape oneself.

Create your world around your work. Create your work around your life. Let other people help you shape it.

Always have one artistic thing that is pure, at least one thing, where you don’t compromise. You can do other things to make money, but have one pure area.

You also need love. Your characters need to love something, otherwise they will be unlovable.

You want to be interesting? Be interested.

I used to care about how I looked. Now I don’t care as much. Maybe it’s because I’m so handsome.

It had happened. I had brought the dream out into reality and it had dissolved. It was just a dream and had found no purchase in the real world where it was dependent on other people for its realization. I wished that I could have sucked my words back inside where they had lived a colorful life of promise, had been nurtured by hope, and had never been tested

Make your characters interested in something. Striving for something. In need of something. Good at something. This will make them likeable and interesting.

In the movie of your entire life, do you want drama and conflict or a straight shot to the top, unencumbered?

Read Frank’s poem, “Advice to the Players.” It talks about all of this, about the human need to create.

I also found that sexual energy was a great engine for performance:

Kurt Cobain is my god. He is the most beautiful man that ever lived.

Sometimes my mother is annoying and I get bratty in return, but I still love her so much. I just don’t want to become her.

I AM THE ACTOR. I am alive in 2013 and I was alive in 1913. I am an actor, so I can play everything. Everyone is in me, and I am a part of everyone.

She was working the desk in the student exhibition hall, reading Kafka. She had a cool demeanor, but it was more like she couldn’t get her words out so easily, so she covered everything with an icy smile.