Acting for the Camera Quotes

“Pushing for an emotion is a common acting mistake. The actor tries to tell the audience what he is feeling when he isn’t really feeling it, by generating the symptoms of the emotion with nothing real making them happen.”
― Tony Barr, Acting for the Camera: Revised Edition

“One of the real causes of an actor’s failure to cry is that the actor frequently tries to cry; he tries to play an emotion that a person in real life would almost always try to suppress or counteract. In real life, a stimulus makes you want to cry, and you try not to cry. As an actor you should do the same thing, for it is your struggle to keep from crying that makes an audience feel like crying”
― Tony Barr, Acting for the Camera: Revised Edition

“our obligation is, of course, to move an audience.”
― Tony Barr, Acting for the Camera: Revised Edition

“Thought does register on camera.”
― Tony Barr, Acting for the Camera: Revised Edition

“Emotion alone does not constitute good acting. Speaking of physicalizing emotions, one of my favorite no-no’s is the use of the face as an acting tool. Don’t. Your face is so intimately connected with the rest of you that it is virtually impossible for it not to do things by itself, and without your help, when your emotions or senses are affected. Trust it; it’ll do what has to be done, and more importantly, it will not do what is unnecessary.”
― Tony Barr, Acting for the Camera: Revised Edition

“always choose to care about what is happening as much as you logically can within the context of the material.”
― Tony Barr, Acting for the Camera: Revised Edition

“Montgomery Clift once said he learned that, in film acting, you had to speak softly and think loud.”
― Tony Barr, Acting for the Camera: Revised Edition

“that energy is the direct result of how much you care about what is happening. If the content of the scene—if what is happening in your performance life—is important enough, you will be listening with sufficient intensity, absorbing and responding with sufficient intensity, to create the necessary energy.”
― Tony Barr, Acting for the Camera: Revised Edition

“those things must be freed. If you can accept that you are all things—and you must if you are to call yourself an actor—then you must bring to the role those parts of yourself that are congruent with what is written, so that you work from yourself at all times, not from some imagined person whose skin you struggle to squeeze into. Don’t force the character on yourself; find the character in yourself”
― Tony Barr, Acting for the Camera: Revised Edition

“If you can accept that you are all things—and you must if you are to call yourself an actor—then you must bring to the role those parts of yourself that are congruent with what is written, so that you work from yourself at all times, not from some imagined person whose skin you struggle to squeeze into. Don’t force the character on yourself; find the character in yourself.”
― Tony Barr, Acting for the Camera: Revised Edition

“In a well-edited film, the cutting is motivated by stimuli.”
― Tony Barr, Acting for the Camera: Revised Edition

“If I had to answer the question, What is the most important ability for the actor? . . . the answer would emphatically be listening. Lest there be some misunderstanding, let me define what I mean by listening. I am talking about listening with all the senses.”
― Tony Barr, Acting for the Camera