I'm no actor. And I have sixty-four pictures to prove it.
I'm very serious about acting.
it's not about being fearless, it's about acting in spite of fear
I ignore my fear,” he says. “When I make decisions, I pretend it doesn’t exist.” I stare at him for a second. I can’t help it. To me there’s a difference between not being afraid and acting in spite of fear, as he does.
I feel myself acting like a lunatic, but I can't stop. It would be like refusing to breathe.
There are some times when I think acting can be a noble profession. And when those rare roles come along, like Down to the Bone, you have the opportunity to be of service.
My whole plan in my head has always been, if I go a year without acting, it's time to go home; it's time to go back to Montreal.
I love acting, but I don't know if I'll ever get used to it.
I feel like acting is something I've been working towards longer. And it would be great to win a Grammy, of course, but for some reason, an Oscar speaks more to me.
I realized that a dancer's life is very short and I had so much of a creative energy in me that I needed outlets to do other things so that's when I started acting more and it all kind of blended together. When you're on stage you're acting and you're dancing, it started blended together now.
A wonderful but kind of a terrible truth about acting is that you actually get to a point where you become content with an impossible task: it is really impossible to properly prepare. You kind of have to start over every time.
Acting is very immediate.
It's the persona that makes you a leading actor. A leading actor has something extra that's fun to watch. But it isn't usually about acting.
If [after one role] you believe that you've mastered acting and you don't have to study the craft or get a deeper perspective, then you're not going to succeed.
When you start in movie business... It is a business, actually. Nothing to do with art. Picasso is art, and Giacometti, but film acting is no art. Just the luck of being discovered, maybe.
I imagined that being someday in pro ball I would have been Kevin Costner in Bull Durham. If I had never discovered acting, I literally would have been that guy.
Acting is about acting, not about being a movie star.
I know this might sound a little cliche but, I feel like everybody is searching for the same thing, and that is truth. I think that's sort of the journey to define that which is most inspirational. Even in acting, when I watch an actor who I find to be so truthful in their craft, or a musician who gets up there and sings so truthfully - I like that.
Even in acting, when I watch an actor who I find to be so truthful in their craft, or a musician who gets up there and sings so truthfully - I like that.
I can disappear into things very easily. But with acting, you have to be in the moment, and it gives me this incredibly fulfilling emotion: being really present.
I never really got on my own case about my own acting. I know a lot of other people have, and probably very justifiably. But I don't worry about stuff like that too much.
I've been in front of the camera a million times as a musician, and even directed a few music videos. So, I know a lot about spacing, focus, blocking, etcetera. So, acting isn't totally new for me. Still, I find it fascinating, because you actually get to be another person.
I do these things, as an actor, that I would have been oblivious to, if I hadn't studied acting. You start to understand the emotions and feelings, as close as you can get to them. That really helps. Acting literally saved my life. It helped me not become one of the statistics of all the military members taking their lives because of depression and PTSD.
When I first started, my main goal was to not be bartending anymore, and to not be working at the bank anymore. I just wanted acting to be my job.
When I was a young kid, my pops introduced me to it. He took me to Harlem, 145th and Edgecombe, to watch the filming of Claudine with James Earl Jones and Diahann Carroll. That was my first taste of seeing a set and the cameras, and I was bit by the acting bug at a young age.
