That's One Of The Most

We All Perform Our Lives In A Way. And The Actor Is A Perfect Metaphor To Get At That Theme Of "how Do We Find Our Authentic Selves?" And That We All - Whether We're Actors Or Not - Perform Ourselves. As A Way Of Searching. As A Way Of Fumbling Around And Trying To Say, Is This My Voice? Is This Who I Am?

I Remember Hearing Someone Say That Good Acting Is More About Taking Off A Mask Than Putting One On, And In Movie Acting, Certainly That's True. With The Camera So Close, You Can See Right Down Into Your Soul, Hopefully. So Being Able To Do That In A Way Is Terrifying, And In Another Way, Truly Liberating. And I Like That About It.

I Can Be Very Snobby About Fiction, Especially Contemporary Fiction. I Can Be Kind Of Overly Demanding, I Think. But This Is, I Think, A Good Time. A Lot Of Fiction Comes Out Right Now. So, I Like Reading The Memoir. I Love Memoir, The Biography, Auto Bio.

One Of The Things On A Very Practical Level As An Actor Or Actress Is That When You Do A Play, You Do The Entire Story Every Time You Do It. You Have Eight Shows A Week. You Have A Rehearsal Process Of Four To Five To Six Weeks. And Then Once You're In Performance, Everybody Else Goes Away And You're There With Your Fellow Actors And The Audience And The Material And Your Life Becomes About That. And You Go Through The Story From The Beginning To The End Every Time You Do It And Depending On How Long You Do It, That's Where The Craft Comes In.

You Can't Ask The Guy With The Checkbook To Always Be The Person. So, We Actors Have To Try. And Believe Me, It's Not Just Young People Who Are Struggling With This, Trying To Get Things Of Substance Made Because Of The Proliferation Of Technology That It's Just Harder And Harder To Get Things That Really Matter Made. But They Are Being Done And You Just Have To Fight The Good Fight And Try To... If You Have Something That You Have Written, You Have To Do Your Best To Try To Get It Made In Whatever Way You Can.