Larry Moss Quotes:

One of the most important things I've learned about acting is that you can't separate how you live your life and how you practice your art.

Topics: Art, Practice, Live Your Life

That's what our work can do: we remind people that things can change, that wounds can heal, that people can be forgiven, and that closed hearts can open again.

source: - Larry Moss (2004). “The Intent to Live: Achieving Your True Potential as an Actor”, p.11, Bantam

Topics: Inspirational, Motivational, Heart

You must create the character's internal life. What do I mean by internal life? I mean the thoughts, feelings, memories, and inner decisions that may not be spoken. When we look into the eyes of actors giving fully realized performances, we can see them thinking. We're interested in what they're experiencing that may never be spoken, that quality of nonverbal expression - which is as much a part of the characters as breathing and as real as what they say and do. This is their internal life. It helps us believe in the characters and care about them.

Topics: Memories, Real, Believe, Nonverbal

Acting represents all that human beings experience, and if you want it to be 'nice,' you will never be a serious communicator of the human experience.

source: - Larry Moss (2004). “The Intent to Live: Achieving Your True Potential as an Actor”, p.64, Bantam

Topics: Nice, Acting, Want, Best Acting, Communicators

You're not simply entitled to be an actor - you're not an actor just because you call yourself one - you earn it. You earn it by working.

source: - Larry Moss (2004). “The Intent to Live: Achieving Your True Potential as an Actor”, p.81, Bantam

Topics: Actors, Entitled

Everything I'm teaching you about acting has one aim only: to fire you up emotionally and behaviorally so that you can give a vivid, involving, and memorable performance.

source: - Larry Moss (2004). “The Intent to Live: Achieving Your True Potential as an Actor”, p.13, Bantam

Topics: Teaching, Memorable, Fire

Acting is a spiritual quest to touch human beings.

source: - Larry Moss (2004). “The Intent to Live: Achieving Your True Potential as an Actor”, p.81, Bantam

Topics: Spiritual, Acting, Quests

It's not enough to identify the Superobjective intellectually; you have to justify it, to find the emotional drive behind it. You need your own specific interpretation of the superobjective so that every time you think of it, it makes you emotional and drives you into action.

source: - Larry Moss (2004). “The Intent to Live: Achieving Your True Potential as an Actor”, p.30, Bantam

Topics: Emotional, Thinking, Acting

You can't play an emotional condition; you have an emotional condition, and because you have that condition, you try to overcome it with active doings (intentions).

source: - Larry Moss (2004). “The Intent to Live: Achieving Your True Potential as an Actor”, p.49, Bantam

Topics: Emotional, Play, Trying

A good or great performance is like peeling an onion; in every scene you reveal another layer, something the audience hasn't seen until then. They stay involved because they are constantly learning about and discovering the character they are watching. They can't take you for granted and it keeps them hooked.

Topics: Character, Layers, Onions, Peeling, Peeling An Onion

I call this book The Intent to Live because great actors don't seem to be acting, they seem to be actually living.

source: - Larry Moss (2004). “The Intent to Live: Achieving Your True Potential as an Actor”, Bantam

Topics: Book, Acting, Actors, Actually Living

The rules are what make us better.

source: - "24: Day 7: 3:00 p.m.-4:00 p.m". TV Series, www.imdb.com. 2009.