130 Quotes by Wallace Shawn

I choose parts because I don’t want to be embarrassed when the movie comes out. What if my friends were to see the movie? What if my niece or nephew wandered into the theater and saw the movie? I don’t want to be too ashamed of it.

In terms of number of movies, I’ve been in an extraordinary amount. If you count only the minutes I’m onscreen, it’s not so long.

If I had even the tiniest scrap of advice to give to a young actor who was figuring out how to audition, I would say don’t memorize the script The reality about auditions is that 98 percent of the results has to do with what you are, not with what you did in the audition.

Acting is trying to be absolutely truthful; to get audiences to believe that you are a dean, when, actually, not only are you not the dean, but if you walked into the building they’d probably throw you out. That’s very hard.

And my singing, I don’t think I could sing Wagner or opera, but I could probably carry a tune. I was in a musical once, but it was never performed.

When I was a child, I did always feel that people were hiding things, and that they weren’t expressing their true feelings. When adults are too complicated, and cover their emotions with layers of well-intentioned subterfuge, the child isn’t seeing reality clearly enough and gets upset.

I sincerely believe that if Bush and Cheney recognized the full humanity of other people’s mothers around the world, they wouldn’t commit the crimes they commit.

We’re in an emergency situation. The United States has become an absolutely terrifying country, and I would hope that I could participate in some way in stopping the horror and the brutality.

The actor’s role in the community is quite unlike anyone else’s. Businessmen, for example, don’t take their clothes off or cry in front of strangers in the course of their work. Actors do.