Kevin Spacey
The greatest sound in the theater is silence.Collection: Silence
You are not just, "This is the way I play it every night." You are constantly finding new ways in, new attacks, "I want to try it this way. Maybe this scene is affecting that scene. I want to attack this scene differently."Collection: Night
It is not about whether you are an executive, a studio or a network. If you have a story or an idea you can build a following for it.Collection: Ideas
Talent is only interesting if it's challenged.Collection: Interesting
If it were not for people who stepped forward and gave me opportunities at a time when I had not proved myself at all, believe me, I would not have a career.Collection: Believe
I can't judge the characters I play, because it's for the audience to do. What I can try to do is to understand and embody what were they going through? How did they make the decisions they made? That to me is a more interesting way to approach something, rather than saying this person is a villain and that person is this and - because it's not very interesting to play that anyway.Collection: Character
The process of doing a play is an organic one and the process of doing a film is totally un-organic.Collection: Play
Its the details and the human element that makes Recount entertaining. Even though we know how the election ends, it plays like a thriller. Its also funny.Collection: Play
I can't imagine that anyone in Hollywood is sitting around trying to decide what actor is good or right or qualified for a role and is being denied a role because of their political views. I don't think that's the way Hollywood works. We're not living in an era of blacklisting.Collection: Thinking
The audience, the place youre in, has everything to do with how your performance goes.Collection: Audience
Studios and networks who ignore either shift - whether the increasing sophistication of storytelling, or the constantly shifting sands of technological advancement - will be left behind.Collection: Advancement
I think that there is no doubt that every experience you have in your life, whether it's playing a character or something else, you bring that to the work.Collection: Character
You can't win a marathon without putting some bandaids on your nipples!Collection: Winning
Sometimes you walk away from playing somebody and you think, "Wow that was far as from my own experience as I can possibly be." And sometimes you walk away thinking, "Wow. There are qualities in that character that I didn't realize I had." And those can be both interesting and uncomfortable.Collection: Character
[What's my favourite book?] It changes all the time.Collection: Book
Sometimes I'll be flipping through the channels and I'll see a movie I'm in. And I'll probably stop and think, 'Sure, I'll watch this.'Collection: Thinking
The characters created cannot just be a mouthpiece for the writer. When you look at a piece of writing, and it's genuine and it doesn't feel like every character is just a mouthpiece for the writer, but that they've been created in such a way that they're expressing an idea that a writer wants to get across, that's when a story succeeds.Collection: Writing
At the end of the day, storytelling is actually very simple in its origin as long as there are people who want to tell stories and there are people who want to hear them.Collection: Simple
While the sciences are hugely important, let us not leave behind a childs imagination.Collection: Imagination
My job consists of basically masking my contempt for the assholes in charge, and, at least once a day, retiring to the men's room so I can jerk off while I fantasize about a life that doesn't so closely resemble Hell.Collection: Jobs
I think that when you put yourself, as actors have to do, in other people's shoes, when you have to put on the costume that someone else has worn in their life, it gets much, much harder to be prejudiced against them and even to be - to not try to look at the world in a sense of "I'm not going to judge somebody. I'm going to try to understand who they are and what they're about."Collection: Thinking
The legal profession, politics and acting are very closely tied: the whole point is to have an idea and get it across to a listener, whether it is one person or five thousand in a hall.Collection: Ideas
Being an actor sometimes requires that you ask yourself questions youd rather not know the answers to.Collection: Actors
The audience has spoken. They want stories. They’re dying for them. They’re rooting for us to give the right thing. And they will talk about it, binge on it, carry it with them on the bus and to the hairdresser, force it on their friends, tweet, blog, Facebook, make fan pages, silly GIFs, and god knows what else about it..Collection: Silly
The Old Vic has always been first and foremost an actors theatre, a home for great talent and memorable performances.Collection: Home
Its interesting to play a politician who gets stuff done.Collection: Play
Whether its Veep or Homeland or The West Wing - which is a more idealised version of democracy - people are fascinated by politics.Collection: Wings
The thing that is always so surprising about plays written in another century is how remarkably elastic they are. When you listen to the way in which Shakespeare attacks relationships, for example, even though the words may start off sounding foreign, in actuality they are so accessible, the motivations so clear, the resonances so contemporary. When you put it in a modern context - we could well be in a place with someone like Gaddafi or Mubarak - it becomes apparent how Richard III resonates with that type of personality, with media and manipulation, alliances and petty jealousies.Collection: Motivation
There's something really incredible about watching what someone else does with a role that we know: the Hamlets or the Henry Vs or the Othellos or the Cleopatras that we've seen on stage.Collection: Doe
I find drinking really helps.Collection: Drinking
Nature's message is clear: we can't keep doing what we're doing now.Collection: Messages
We have to start listening to nature now.Collection: Listening
Clean, sustainable energy is crucial and cannot wait.Collection: Waiting
You risk working with this director, you risk making this movie, you risk working with another actor you don't know. It makes your heart beat faster. And it keeps you interested.Collection: Heart
I think that acting is a very humanizing profession.Collection: Thinking
Politics and acting are very closely tied. The job is to convince.Collection: Jobs
I love producing, I love bringing things together.Collection: Together
I've been around politics a long time. I've seen it at its best and its worst, been at so many events, listened to private conversations versus public speaking, understood the game of it, and in many ways the theatrics.Collection: Games
People sometimes say, "Isn't it boring, isn't it always the same? It's the same lines." I go, "Well, do you play tennis? Because that's the best analogy I can give." If you go out eight times and play tennis eight times this week, yeah it's the same rules but it's a different game every time you're out on that court.And that's the best analogy I can come up with the theater.Collection: Eight
I want to bring theatre to a new generation, using the tools available to us, including taking it out to them on film and with new technology, but that is just so they can discover theatre. I want them to come in and sit in a theatre. This is the way to plant seeds.Collection: Technology
Gaming is going into storytelling. It was a new audience.Collection: Storytelling
You've got to trust the ground you're standing on and the work you've done in telling your story. The goal should be to bring those thousands of people - viewers - together and make them one. When you feel that happening, it's usually in silence, not applause or laughter.Collection: Laughter
The most important definition of an actor, the job of the actor, is to serve the writer, not yourself. Way too many actors serve themselves.Collection: Jobs
What I do is interpret, not create. I may add elements and do something different. That is what is so incredible about theatre. Why do we love it that there are nine Hamletsor six King Lears over two years? We love to watch a different actor attack the same material.Collection: Kings
I'm not a writer. I marvel at writing. I am sometimes absolutely astounded when I read something and I think how in the world did that man or that woman sit down at a typewriter, a computer or a pen and an ink well, and seemingly have nothing come between their heart and that pen.Collection: Writing
It's the kind of democratization of the Internet that has led to the breaking down of barriers into the creative arts.Collection: Art
When you know you have 1,000 people sitting on the edge of their seats in silence because of a shift that just happened on stage, there is no better feeling.Collection: People
I have done films where we all thought the director didn't know what he was doing and it is going to be a gobble gobble turkey. And you go and watch it and it is great.Collection: Turkeys
The control is shifting because of the democratisation of the internet. My industry is very good at building walls to stop people getting in.Collection: Wall