Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
The third season of the Leftovers came along and Damon Lindelof sent me the script to Episode 3, and I called him up and thanked him for one of the greatest gifts I've been given. I had that script for almost two months, in the mountains in Idaho, before I even got on a plane and flew to Australia and went to the outback. He also told me to learn about the indigenous people in Australia and learn how to play a didgeridoo. It was just great. It was probably, in many ways, the best acting experience I've ever had.
Acting is always sort of the same - like you want to be - you know you're pretending and you want to make it as real as you can. That's the similarity. The mediums other than that are completely different. I mean you know with camera work you're doing really small detailed work and you know if you do anything too big you've sort of failed. And with stage, especially with the play I'm doing right now, I'm doing a farce, and it's so over the top that you can't actually be too big. So it's just completely different.
Acting for me is liberating. It's almost like therapy, because I grew up in a blue-collar environment where you're not supposed to have feelings. So it's freeing to be in a safe place like a TV or film set where you discover feelings, and where you're supposed to be open and honest with everybody while exposing the weakest parts of you. And then when people congratulate you on revealing the weakest part of who you are, then you start realizing that that might not be weakness. It might be a different kind of strength.
Does the engineer ever predict the acceleration of a given body from a knowledge of its mass and of the forces acting upon it? Of course. Does the chemist ever measure the mass of an atom by measuring its acceleration in a given field of force? Yes. Does the physicist ever determine the strength of a field by measuring the acceleration of a known mass in that field? Certainly. Why then, should any one of these roles be singled out as the role of Newton's second law of motion? The fact is that it has a variety of roles.
Basically, the prosecutor who led case against me and that administration were trying to say that an actor can be held responsible for his acting, thousands of miles away from where he did the acting. The analogy would be if an artist painted a nude painting in New York City, and it was met with accolades and great reviews. And suddenly, somebody from Texas bought it and put it in their shoe store and it was found to be obscene in Texas, the artist in New York is responsible, and goes to jail because it's obscene in Texas.
The mission of the law is not to oppress persons and plunder them of their property, even though the law may be acting in a philanthropic spirit. Its purpose is to protect persons and property.... If you exceed this proper limit -- if you attempt to make the law religious, fraternal, equalizing, philanthropic, industrial, or artistic -- you will then be lost in uncharted territory, in vagueness and uncertainty, in a forced utopia or, even worse, in a multitude of utopias, each striving to seize the law and impose it on you.
From our limited vantage point, our lives are marked by an endless series of contingencies. We frequently find ourselves, instead of acting as we planned, reacting to an unexpected turn of events. We make plans but are often forced to change those plans. But there are no contingencies with God. Our unexpected, forced change of plans is a part of His plan. God is never surprised; never caught off guard; never frustrated by unexpected developments. God does as He pleases and that which pleases Him is always for His glory and our good.
A lot of directors on a base level are fearful of actors and maybe even distrustful. I love the craft of acting and I love actors so I think they can probably sense that. They also know that I understand what their process is, having done it myself. The thing I come back to over and over again is that for most people who are not analyzing it from a critical point of view, most iconic film moments are actor moments. We show up to commune with another human being and their experience. We don't show up necessarily to watch a really cool dolly shot.
Acting is such a high art, and coming from theater, I know how hard it is and respect the craft. I want to look back when it ends, and say I challenged myself. I wanted to be an actor you always remember, and those who are the great ones. That's just a personal journey. If you're too comfortable you're taking it too easy. The director can direct you for two months but before that it's just you and your internal drive. I want people to go to my movies and know it'll be good, and with great actors. You never know what you'll learn from just staying in the same space with them.
Of course, you can never watch something like somebody else watches something like you, but nonetheless, you have to try. So I think on camera you learn a lot about how much the camera does for you, which is what is the great luxury of movie acting. Or acting whether it's TV or movies or whatever it is, that the camera's really such a gift because there's so much that it sees and does if you're willing to just be open and expose yourself and all of that. So you also learn what doesn't matter. And sometimes when you think about things, you think things matter that don't matter.
