When I was younger, I thought I had to shut myself off, work really hard to cry. I learned after a while that that's just not... You know, often in life, you cry when you're caught off-guard. That's where I need to be when I'm acting, too.
Interpretation
Being open and vulnerable can enhance artistic expression.
Julianne Moore reflects on her past belief that she needed to suppress emotions and work hard to evoke them while acting. She realizes that genuine emotion often arises unexpectedly, suggesting that vulnerability and openness are essential for effective artistic performance.
In practice
An actress might use this quote to inspire colleagues during a rehearsal.
I moved frequently because my dad was in the army, so I was always new in school. I think if you've ever done that, you know what it means to not matter in a room. I think it's a good experience for everyone to have, to feel like they're not noticed, because it teaches you to be empathetic.
People with Alzheimer's deserve to be seen, so that we can find a cure!
Everybody has the right to marry the person they love and be represented as a couple and family... It's something that people will look back on in years to come and say, 'I can't believe it took so long for us to recognize this.' It'll be like segregation and giving women the right to vote.
I'm not scared of many things in front of the camera. Everywhere else, yes, I'm terrified. But acting is just pretending, and you are exploring feelings in a safe environment.
I think imperfections are important, just as mistakes are important. You only get to be good by making mistakes, and you only get to be real by being imperfect.
Each morning my characters greet me with misty faces willing, though chilled, to muster for another day's progress through the dazzling quicksand the marsh of blank paper.
Art is born when the temporary touches the eternal.
The informing idea of what you want to say and do, that's what will take you from film school to professional - the idea. That's what is original to you.
The creation of art is not the fulfillment of a need but the creation of a need. The world never needed Beethoven's Fifth Symphony until he created it. Now we could not live without it.
It's ironic that while I was a worker in Detroit, which I left when I was twenty six, my sense was that the thing that's going to stop me from being a poet is the fact that I'm doing this crummy work.
I think the only thing filmmakers can do is try to make good movies and make them as long as they allow us to keep making them. But at the end of the day, it is a business, and if audiences don't care, there's nothing we can do. It'll just go away, I guess.
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