Acting Tips

Humphrey Bogart:
Acting is experience with something sweet behind it.
Sir Charles Chaplin:
Timing! My mother gave me that. I was born with it. I don't think you can teach a person to act.
[Radio Times, March 1979]
Glenda Jackson: You'd think is something one would grow out of. But you grow into it. The more you do, the more you realize how painfully easy it is to be lousy and how very difficult to be good.
[People, March 1985]
Vanessa Redgrave: I give myself to my parts as a lover. It's the only way.
[Time, 17 March 1967]
Robert De Niro: One of the things about acting is it allows you to live other people's lives without having to pay the price. I've never been one of those actors who has touted myself as a fascinating human being. I had to decide early on whether I was to be an actor or a personality.
Lawrence Barrett, 19th Century American Actor: Acting is... forever carving a statue of snow.
Robert Redford: A lot of what acting is paying attention.
Jeff Goldblum: Acting is nothing more or less than playing. The idea is to humanize life.
Glenda Jackson: Acting is not about dressing up. Acting is about stripping bare. The whole essence of learning lines is to forget them so you can make them sound like you thought of them that instant.

Constantin Stanislavski: All action in theatre must have inner justification, be logical, coherent, and real.
Marlon Brando: Acting in general, is something most people think they're incapable of but they do it from morning to night. The subtlest acting I've ever seen is by ordinary people trying to show they feel something they don't or trying to hide something. It's something everyone learns at an early age.
[Newsweek, 13 March 1972]
Gerard Depardieu: Concentration does not mean inhibition. One can and should be attentive yet appear nonchalant.
[Cyrano de Bergerac, publicity release, 1990]
Gene Hackman: Honesty isn't enough for me. That becomes very boring. If you can convince people what you're doing is real and it's also bigger than life-that's exciting.
[Show, 1972]
Jeremy Irons: You think, you don't just speak. The lines come off the thoughts.
[American Film magazine]
John Gielgud: One mustn't allow acting to be like stockbroker -- you must not take it just as a means of earning a living, to go down every day to do a job of work. The big thing is to combine punctuality, efficiency, good nature, obedience, intelligence, and concentration with an unawareness of what is going to happen next, thus keeping yourself available for excitement.

Anthony Quinn: Having talent is like having blue eyes. You don't admire a man for the color of his eyes. I admire a man for what he does with his talent.
[Sunday Express, 1960]
Michael Caine: I'm a skilled professional actor. Whether or not I've any talent is beside the point.
[Film yearbook, 1985]
Stella Adler: It's not enough to have talent, you have to have a talent for your talent.
Uta Hagen: Talent is an amalgam of high sensitivity; easy vulnerability; high sensory equipment (seeing, hearing, touching, smelling, tasting intensely); a vivid imagination as well as a grip on reality; the desire to communicate one's own experience and sensations, to make one's self heard and seen.

Read the play for the first time.
Do some basic reading and research on the playwright and on the era in which the play was originally written and produced.
Read the play for the second time and focus on your role.
Analyze the structure and the content of the play.
The 3 W. Ask yourself and answer these questions about your role:
Who am I?
Where am I?
What do I want?
Visualize your character's physical appearance.
Fill in all character activity not provided in the text. (Where does he go when he exits? What he was doing before entering the stage?)

Do you need a monologue? I'm sure it's here.
Check this link: http://astore.amazon.com/monologues-20/

Alice in Theaterland