QuoteProject
Acting isn't really a creative profession. It's an interpretative one.
Paul Newman
ShareWTF𝕏

Interpretation

What this quote means

Acting is about interpreting roles rather than creating new concepts.

Paul Newman's quote suggests that acting is less about the creativity associated with generating original ideas and more about the skill of interpreting and embodying the characters and stories already created by writers. This highlights the actor's role as a translator of emotion and intention rather than a creator in the purely artistic sense.

Themes

ActingInterpretationArtCreativityPerformance

In practice

Example use cases

During a drama class, a teacher may quote this to emphasize the importance of understanding character motivations.

More from Paul Newman

If you're playing a poker game and you look around the table and and can't tell who the sucker is, it's you.
Paul NewmanRead
Twenty-five years ago I couldn`t walk down the street without being recognized. Now I can put a cap on, walk anywhere and no one pays me any attention. They don`t ask me about my movies and they don`t ask me about my salad dressing because they don`t know who I am. Am I happy about this? You bet.
Paul NewmanRead
A dollar won is twice as sweet as a dollar earned.
Paul NewmanRead
I like racing but food and pictures are more thrilling. I can't give them up. In racing you can be certain, to the last thousandth of a second, that someone is the best, but with a film or a recipe, there is no way of knowing how all the ingredients will work out in the end. The best can turn out to be awful and the worst can be fantastic. Cooking is like performing and performing like cooking.
Paul NewmanRead
Dreams without movement are delusions, escapes, kid’s play. You have to put your feet into your dreams if they’re ever going to be reality. The dreamers we know and love today are the ones who worked the hardest
Paul NewmanRead
I respect generosity in people, and I respect it in companies too, I don't look at it as philanthropy; I see it as an investment in the community.
Paul NewmanRead

Similar quotes

Beauty's where you find it; not just where you bump and grind it.
Madonna CicconeRead
I love acting. Oh, God, I love it. But all this fame and all this bullshit attention. I'm not supernatural. I've done nothing extremely special to deserve the position. It happens every couple of years, and it's happened to hundreds of people before me.
Heath LedgerRead
Poetry begins where language starts: in the shadows and accidents of one person’s life.
Eavan BolandRead
You don't have to make something in order to retain your identity as an artist or a writer or a creative person. A lot of people think they have to be producing in order to maintain that identity.
Lucy DacusRead
Designing is a matter of concentration. You go deep into what you want to do. It's about intensive research, really. The concentration is warm and intimate and like the fire inside the earth - intense but not distorted. You can go to a place, really feel it in your heart. It's actually a beautiful feeling.
Peter ZumthorRead
You don't merely give over your creativity to making a film - you give over your life! In theatre, by contrast, you live these two rather strange lives simultaneously; you have no option but to confront the mould on last night's washing-up.
Daniel Day-LewisRead

A little wisdom, now and then

Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.