Bad actors try to cry, and good actors try not to. Bad actors try to laugh, and good actors try not to.
Martin LandauRead
An actor knows much more about a character than the character knows about himself.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Actors delve deeply into their characters, gaining insights that the characters themselves may not possess.
This quote by Martin Landau highlights the idea that an actor's understanding of their role goes beyond the script. An actor invests time and emotion into studying their character's background, motivations, and emotions, often discovering layers of complexity that the character may remain unaware of. This depth of understanding can lead to more authentic and compelling performances, as the actor embodies the character's journey with greater clarity and insight.
Themes
ActorCharacterPerformanceInsightArt
In practice
Example use cases
In a drama club meeting to discuss character development.
More from Martin Landau
All quotes βI run the Actor's Studio on the West Coast, and one of the things I say all the time to the people I teach - many of whom are acting teachers - is that an actor needs to make choices that make him present.
Martin LandauRead
I studied with Strasberg, Elia Kazan. They raised the bar. They weren't easy to please, and they made you achieve the best you could do. That's what a teacher does: he infuses you with passion for something.
Martin LandauRead
As a Jew, there's a need to keep that atrocity alive. There were Catholics and gypsies and homosexuals who died in the Holocaust, too. It's amazing that people allowed this slaughter to take place. There's a need to make these films and reiterate it happened.
Martin LandauRead
I love to see lack of clarity in a performance as well as clarity, as well as trust, as well as the kinds of things that human beings go through. I love to see spontaneity and 'inevitability.' How it gets there is going to shock the hell out of me, but it will get there somehow.
Martin LandauRead
People think I'm a very serious actor, which I am. But you know, if you don't have a sense of humor doing what I do, you perish.
Martin LandauRead
Similar quotes
I draw because words are too unpredictable. I draw because words are too limited. If you speak and write in English, or Spanish, or Chinese, or any other language, then only a certain percentage of human beings will get your meaning. But when you draw a picture everybody can understand it. If I draw a cartoon of a flower, then every man, woman, and child in the world can look at it and say, "That's a flower.
Sherman AlexieRead
It's a cliche, but true, that writing is intensely solitary and at times really lonely. I sit in one room and talk to squirrels and blue jays all day.
Douglas CouplandRead
On acting to daughter Isabella Rossellini: Keep it simple. Make a blank face and the music and the story will fill it in.
Ingrid BergmanRead
I always knew that if I was ever going to perform something that I wrote in front of an audience, I was going to do the thing I most like to experience as an audience member, which is to be tricked.
Phoebe Waller-BridgeRead
I was the shadow of the waxwing slain By the false azure in the windowpane; I was the smudge of ashen fluff -and I Lived on, flew on, in the reflected sky. And from the inside, too, I'd duplicate Myself, my lamp, an apple on a plate: Uncurtaining the night, I'd let dark glass Hang all the furniture above the grass, And how delightful when a fall of snow Covered my glimpse of lawn and reached up so As to make chair and bed exactly stand Upon that snow, out in that crystal land!
Vladimir NabokovRead
A lot of what acting is is paying attention.
Robert RedfordRead