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Home , Alan Alda, Peggy Feury, Willem Dafoe

C O R E Y P A R K E R

Quotes on Acting

“Being an actor takes time. I had been in movies, I’d played leads in movies, and I was still down at unemployment, waiting in line for my check. It wasn’t until Godfather 2 that I could make a living acting.” – Robert DeNiro

“What does the camera capture when it looks at me? I’ll leave that for others to assess. But staring back at the lens from within myself, I feel so much of what I’ve otherwise kept hidden and filtered. The things I don’t like about myself, the things I do like about myself, the things I’m not but I’d like to be, the things I am but don’t want others to know about—they’re all there, percolating inside. Courage and cowardice, strength and weakness, fear and joy, love and hate—that’s what makes up the actor, So that’s available to the camera.” –

“One of the reasons people sell out so quickly is because even the talented think they’re frauds. It’s a culture that doesn’t encourage people to believe in the work they do. You’re told to second guess yourself all the time. That’s where I think a little hostility and arrogance can save you.” –

“Laugh at yourself, but don’t ever aim your doubt at yourself. Be bold. When you embark for strange places, don’t leave any of yourself safely on the shore. Have the nerve to go into unexplored territory.” –

W W W . C O R E Y P A R K E R A C T I N G . C O M “Listening is everything. Listening is the whole deal, that’s what I think. And I mean that in terms of before you work, after you work, in between work with your friends, your mother. It’s everything. And it’s where you learn everything.” –

“I was doing a scene in class and Peggy Feury stopped the scene. I started telling her I was having a problem, she said, “No! You’re problem is not your problem. HIS (your character’s) problem is your problem!” – Sean Penn

“In the second act, I entered, suffering from a whopper hangover. Harold Clurman (dir.) told me, “You have the biggest hangover in the world.” Of course, he was talking to a guy who doesn’t drink. I racked my brain for something to use and finally decided to make it visual for myself. When I started to analyze a hangover, the main thing I could grab onto was the fear of movement. I thought, “I don’t want to move any part of my body, no matter how tiny.” When I came out, I moved as little as possible. I visualized a basket on top of my head containing two dozen eggs. I crossed to the table, sat down, and delivered my line: “Coffee. Black…very black.” –

“People say I make strange choices, but they’re not strange for me. I’m fascinated by human behavior, by what’s underneath the surface, by the worlds inside people.” –

"How the part is played will change radically depending upon the unique background, experiences, personality and priorities emanating from the character and the actor who is playing the part.It's the who-am-I of the character as well as the who you are as a person that brings in the nuances of individual behavior for that character." – Ivana Chubbuck

W W W . C O R E Y P A R K E R A C T I N G . C O M “When you play a role, you don’t see yourself doing it at first, but then you get things from yourself that you ordinarily wouldn’t get.” – Robert DeNiro

"The strongest audience response comes when the actor is involved in what is happening." –

"Grab the moment and make a choice--even if it's wrong." – Laura San Giacomo

“The minute that you're not learning I believe you're dead.” –

"Any good actor uses the principles of Stanislavski, no matter what they do. They may do it unwittingly, but they do it. You can call that 'method,' I don't care what you call it, but it's about being truthful. Every time you find a truthful actor, you find someone who bears out some of the realism that Stanislavski bothered to put on paper." – Montgomery Clift

“Yeah. It’s very difficult to escape your background, you know? And I don't think it's necessary to even try, you know, to escape it. More and more, I start to think that it's necessary to see exactly what it is that you inherited on both ends of the stick - your timidity, your courage, your self-deceit and your honesty and all the rest of it. You know, it's necessary to include all of that in order to be able to accept oneself. The fact that the characters that I portray have to do with that kind of dilemma is fine by me because I know what that is, you know? And I suppose the way it's expressed is part and parcel of who I am.” – Sam Shepard, 1998 with Terry Gross

W W W . C O R E Y P A R K E R A C T I N G . C O M

"People have an idea of me which is not the reality. On set I’m an actor like every other actor. Most times, for every part I play, I can think of other actors who would be better. I worry from the moment I take a job. I worry about how I'm going to do it, if I can do it. I try to work out what I have to do on set and how I do that.

"I get extremely anxious. I panic. I can't get it. It happens every time, and I get myself into this state, and then I walk on set and the director says, 'Roll', and all of a sudden all of it disappears and it's all happening, and I relax and I'm doing what I do and I'm not even thinking about it. And I relax up until the moment they yell 'Cut'." – Jack Nicholson

"If it wasn't hard, everyone would do it. It's the hard that makes it great." –

‘I think there’s a myth that Actors are all extroverts and I don’t think that that’s true, I think that’s there’s something that happens in that five seconds before you walk on stage, I don’t know what it is, where you enter a different zone and that zone doesn’t always translate into everyday life.” – Cate Blanchett

"Where you find great training has to do with your connection with a teacher. But what is imperative is that you train. Studying not only improves your craft, but also teaches you pride and respect for the work. It helps you see your place in a long, beautiful line of people who have followed this profession before you." – Tim Guinee

"Where you find challenge is where you approach development." – Harold Clurman

W W W . C O R E Y P A R K E R A C T I N G . C O M "The hardest thing for an actor is , to simply tell the truth. And, of course, truth is relatable only to one's experience. But if you can take what's happening in the play and equate it with your own life, to speak it in the way you understand it in your soul and not try to figure out what anyone else thinks about it, that's it. Because one's vision of something is different from anyone else's in the world and the trick is to find it yourself." –

On the initial driving force that took him into acting: "I didn't think I was particularly good at it, but I wanted to be, I had a strong WILL to be good at it. And it was my need to know, my need to draw my pictures on the cave walls about what my fears were, what my needs were. Somewhere in there. I was in a cave and I needed to draw some pictures on the wall about what my journey was, and that drive, that need, led me to acting. I wasn't good at it, but I had a deep, intense desire to be good at it, and all my failings didn't stop me. I had that will to learn that kept me going through all my effort, through all of my struggle." –

“The very first time I saw myself on-screen, I almost died." – Annabella Sciorra

"I remember the first time I saw myself on screen, in Heat and Dust, I just hated everything I was doing, I just hated myself,' Scacchi says, putting her hands to her neck in a strangling gesture. 'I kept sneaking out at the Baftas to dry-retch in the loo. And when the lights came up I ran out, down the stairs and on to Piccadilly and hid in a doorway gasping. But, over the years, seeing the rushes on screen, I started to swallow that… allergy to myself.” – Greta Scacchi

“When I saw myself on screen for the first time, I was horrified. I had a bad wig and they took the words from a scene I shot with Jane and put them in my mouth in a different scene. I thought, I’ve made a terrible mistake, no more movies. I hate this business”. – Meryl Streep

W W W . C O R E Y P A R K E R A C T I N G . C O M “The characters that I play are real. They are real so they have as much right to be portrayed as any other characters.” –

“I say luck is when an opportunity comes along and you're prepared for it.” –

“I can't just say the words. I love each person I play; I have to be that person. I have to do him true.” –

“But the ultimate execution of it is almost ninety-five percent will. All the work before that is you laying the groundwork, asking the questions, understanding what you need to do, understanding what you need to look at, finding the logic to whatever needs to happen, all the character work, all the emotional through line. Once you get there, it’s will.” –

“It’s so hard to explain what it takes to be able to tap the emotion that you carry with you. Sometimes you have to dig for it. Other times it’s at your finger tips and you don’t even have to call on it.” –

“I don’t know that you can capture all of it, but you can certainly bring the audience in with you. So that they can read the indecision, or they can read the conviction, or they can read the probing, whatever it is you’re trying to convey.” – Paul Newman

“As an actor you do things. You don’t ‘show,’ you do.” –

W W W . C O R E Y P A R K E R A C T I N G . C O M “It’s not our job to judge each other because we don’t have all the facts or information about the person’s karma. They act out their own destiny and make their own mistakes that they will either learn from or not, but that is their path—not ours. We can’t even judge ourselves. Who knows what mistakes we need to make in order to learn the lessons we came here to learn?” – Lee Strasberg

“It is going on the stage and saying, “I’m going to follow through. I’m going to go through with it come hell or high water. I will not let myself slide back at the moment I feel insecure. I will go on.“ – Lee Strasberg

"If Michelangelo was great, it was not simply because he had talent. If you have talent, you can also be a Michelangelo--IF YOU WORK AS HARD. Never mind the . To work on the Sistine Chapel ceiling from a high ladder with back-breaking effort for two years in order to paint those fantastically wonderful figurines takes talent, but it also takes excruciating labor. Talent in that sense is universal. Labor is not, and if you do not expend the proper time and effort, you will neither make use of the talent that you have nor solve the problems that you perceive." – Lee Strasberg

“One cannot always create subconsciously and with inspiration. No such genius exists in the world. Therefore our art teaches us first of all to create consciously and rightly. The more you have of conscious creative moments in your role, the more chance you will have of the flow of inspiration.” – Constantin Stanislavski

“An actor must make his or her needs, goals, wants objectives so strong, that he or she is willing to interfere with the other actor in order to get what he or she needs. Interfering means getting in their way so that what you want is stronger than what they want.” – Michael Shurtleff

W W W . C O R E Y P A R K E R A C T I N G . C O M