Your assumptions are your windows on the world. Scrub them off every once in awhile, or the light won’t come in.
ALAN ALDAYour assumptions are your windows on the world. Scrub them off every once in awhile, or the light won’t come in.
ALAN ALDANever Have Your Dog Stuffed is really advice to myself, a reminder to myself not to avoid change or uncertainty, but to go with it, to surf into change.
ALAN ALDAIt makes it fun. When an actor plays a character, you want what that character wants. Otherwise it doesn’t look authentic. So I really want to defeat Jimmy – I mean Jimmy as the character.
ALAN ALDABegin challenging your own assumptions.
ALAN ALDAAs an artist, as an actor, as a writer, you have to use what’s personal to you. You have to be personal about your work; otherwise, it doesn’t ring true.
ALAN ALDAThey’re supposed to be gigantic explosions and they’re just these insignificant little dots. If you step back from things far enough you realize how important and powerful you are.
ALAN ALDAEventually, I found a radical way of thinking about listening. Real listening is a willingness to let the other person change you.
ALAN ALDAI really don’t like plays or movies that service propaganda.
ALAN ALDAI don’t really worry about the size of the part much any more.
ALAN ALDAA really great actor, in a lucky performance, can transform himself or herself. I’ve seen actors do that.
ALAN ALDARepublicans are as capable of coming up with great ideas and moving this country along as anyone – they just don’t do it.
ALAN ALDAI try to find out what there is in the character that in a way, you can’t put into words. If I could put it into words, then it wouldn’t be a performance. And if I do put it into words, as I play it, I start to get boxed in by those words.
ALAN ALDAIt’s too bad I’m not as wonderful a person as people say I am, because the world could use a few people like that.
ALAN ALDAEveryone opens up to one another right away. That’s a terrific thing. I love that about actors. They know how personal this job is.
ALAN ALDAIn 2003, I almost died of an intestinal blockage when I was on a mountain in Chile, filming a segment for ‘Scientific American Frontiers.’
ALAN ALDAWhat then are doing if not creating a better place together? I think, for me the key has to be, what do I want to create? What is it I want to leave behind?
ALAN ALDA