I call this book The Intent to Live because great actors don't seem to be acting, they seem to be actually living.

I call this book The Intent to Live because great actors don't seem to be acting, they seem to be actually living.

You're not simply entitled to be an actor - you're not an actor just because you call yourself one - you earn it. You earn it by working.

You must create the character's internal life. What do I mean by internal life? I mean the thoughts, feelings, memories, and inner decisions that may not be spoken. When we look into the eyes of actors giving fully realized performances, we can see them thinking. We're interested in what they're experiencing that may never be spoken, that quality of nonverbal expression - which is as much a part of the characters as breathing and as real as what they say and do. This is their internal life. It helps us believe in the characters and care about them.

Everything I'm teaching you about acting has one aim only: to fire you up emotionally and behaviorally so that you can give a vivid, involving, and memorable performance.

Acting represents all that human beings experience, and if you want it to be 'nice,' you will never be a serious communicator of the human experience.

It's not enough to identify the Superobjective intellectually; you have to justify it, to find the emotional drive behind it. You need your own specific interpretation of the superobjective so that every time you think of it, it makes you emotional and drives you into action.