Pastoral Resources

Whatever you do, make sure you want to write more than you want to be a writer. Make sure you want to act more than you want to be an actor. That is what will sustain you.

The way I teach people to sing... I have them talk the lyric out until it sounds like something they really believe, like an actor with a monologue.

When an actor has money, he doesn't send letters, but telegrams.

I was never a part of the Actor's Studio, because two friends of mine started it in 1947 and by that time I'd gone to California.

A lot of actors said they hated the studio system, but I loved it. It was like a college; it was a great place to learn.

Other actors like to rehearse on film-they like 30 or 40 takes. When you get an actor like that, it becomes difficult for me because I'm ready to quit after number two.

Directors say that you should get actors before they are recognized. They will be a pain or have an opinion.

When you're a working actor and you're happy to be one, you can't focus all your energy on acting because you will go crazy. You have to focus as much energy as you can away from yourself.

When you choose to be an actor, you are going against the odds.

While we look to the dramatist to give romance to realism, we ask of the actor to give realism to romance.

An actor entering through the door, you've got nothing. But if he enters through the window, you've got a situation.

Actors fall into this trap if they missed being loved for who they really were and not for what they could do - sing, dance, joke about - then they take that as love.

A lot of comic actors derive their main force from childish behavior. Most great comics are doing such silly things; you'd say, 'That's what a child would do.'

Many plays - certainly mine - are like blank checks. The actors and directors put their own signatures on them.

If I wasn't an actor, I'd be a secret agent.

You can pick out actors by the glazed look that comes into their eyes when the conversation wanders away from themselves.

When you're an actor you don't really know what you have to do until you see what you look like.

All good actors are easy to work with. It's the ones that aren't very good who tend to be very difficult.

I just love working with actors in general.

A fan club is a group of people who tell an actor he's not alone in the way he feels about himself.