You’ve got to show what it’s really like, and try to reach them on their own grounds.
JAMES DEANWhen an actor plays a scene exactly the way a director orders, it isn’t acting. It’s following instructions.
More James Dean Quotes
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Being an actor is the loneliest thing in the world. You are all alone with your concentration and imagination, and that’s all you have.
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I firmly believe Rebel Without A Cause is such a picture.
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When an actor plays a scene exactly the way a director orders, it isn’t acting. It’s following instructions.
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Take it easy driving– the life you save may be mine.
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I wouldn’t like me, if I had to be around me.
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To me, acting is the most logical way for people’s neuroses to manifest themselves, in this great need we all have to express ourselves.
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To grasp the full significance of life is the actor’s duty; to interpret it his problem; and to express it his dedication.
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What better way to die? It’s fast and clean and you go out in a blaze of glory!
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I also became close to nature, and am now able to appreciate the beauty with which this world is endowed.
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And he must be allowed the space, the freedom to express himself in the role. Without that space, an actor is no more than an unthinking robot with a chest-full of push-buttons.
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Dream as if you’ll live forever, live as if you’ll die today.
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An actor must interpret life, and in order to do so must be willing to accept all the experiences life has to offer. In fact, he must seek out more of life than life puts at his feet.
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I fawn over these people. I have given them my heart and my soul. The trouble is, I’m unable to love anyone tangible
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You are who you are meant to be. Dance as if no one’s watching. Love as if it’s all you know. Dream as if you’ll live forever. Live as if you’ll die today.
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There is no way to be truly great in this world. We are impaled on the crook of conditioning.
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Being a good actor isn’t easy. Being a man is even harder. I want to be both before I’m done.
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A fish that is in the water has no choice that he is. Genius would have it that we swim in sand. We are fish and we drown.
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But you can’t show some far off idyllic conception of behavior if you want the kids to come and see the picture.
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It was an accident, although I’ve been involved in some kind of theatrical function or other since I was a child – in school, music, athletics.
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Racing is the only time I feel whole.
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I’m a serious-minded and intense little devil – terribly gauche and so tense that I don’t see how people can stay in the same room as me. I know I couldn’t tolerate myself.
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How can you measure acting in inches?
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If a man can bridge the gap between life and death, if he can live on after he’s dead, then maybe he was a great man.
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You’re tearing me apart!
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Remember: Life is short, break the rules (they were made to be broken) Forgive quickly, kiss slowly Love truly, laugh uncontrollably And never regret anything that makes you smile.
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Nowadays, he lives in a world we don’t understand too well, the actor’s world. We don’t see too much of him. But he’s a good boy, my Jim.
JAMES DEAN