It sure is boring to be around people who are in character all the time. I always find it's closer to mental illness than acting excellence.
William H. MacyI love making movies, I love the differentness of it, I love writing. But I've always liked television. I grew up on television.
William H. MacyI think what all actors share is that, somewhere down in your solar plexus, there's this fear that you're not going to be able to come up with the goods, that this is the one movie where you're going to look like a fool, and they should have cast someone else. And you feel ugly, and you've got three chins, and you've gained too much weight, and you're losing your hair, and there are so many better actors who could do this. But if you've got chops, what you realize is that everybody feels that way, so just show up and do the job.
William H. MacyAnother mistake a director can make is not to be prepared, so you get there on the day to shoot the scene, and they don't know how it should be blocked, and they're not clear on how they want to do a scene.
William H. MacyAll modesty aside, I think I'm good at reading scripts. The way I read a script is as fast as I can, all in one sitting, and I don't read many of the stage directions. I only read enough stage directions to let me know where I am, because they're always so verbose and mostly horseshit. So I only read the dialogue, which allows me to see the movie in my mind's eye in real time.
William H. Macy