Spencer Livingston: Film, Theatre, Performance

"When the camera lights are turned off on the set, you realize how dingy your real world really is".

"Well, it's a lot like living, except that you usually actually know what you are doing".

"I'm never not acting."

"What's the pay rate?"

"I've never crossed a picket line for acting work, and would rather die. I have, however, had a director spit in my face thirty or so times to get a good take, and been slapped hard in the face 50 or so times by an actress to get a good shot, stood in freezing cold weather in summer clothes pretending to be warm, worn heavy layers of clothes in steamy New Orleans heat pretending to shiver from the cold, learned ASL in a day, swallowed a handful of Vivarin pretending that they were amphetamines (God that was horrible), worn ugly clothes, and said some stupid things in very bad movies. I've put up with everything except for working with Lindsay Lohan, which was intolerable and led to my only walk-off. I worked in a textile factory for five years, and it was a bit nicer than acting."

"Acting is a lot like faking a polygraph test. The same gimmicks work."

"Brando? Don't talk about Brando. I know Richard Edson! He played in my band! We were roomates in the loft!"

"Serious? No, I can't "be" serious. I can "act" serious, though. Like this: 'When acting, do what you were planning to do, but at the last minute take three times as long to do it. The biggest obstacle to good acting is the lines that the actor must say. Don't let the lines kill you. Anyone can read lines. The real acting is done when you are pausing, reflecting, and not saying anything. If you can act during those moments, the lines that surround those moments won't strangle your work and make you just another pizza delivery driver doing their job. Work the spaces.' How's that for serious?"

"I've gotten a lot of mileage over the years for being the only person (that I know of) who ever ate a Salvador Dali original during a performance piece; it suggests a lot of possibilities for career advancement. Especially with the chili sauce, I'm sure it tasted a lot better than the dogshit Divine ate in "Pink Flamingos" in her quest for career advancement. As Lawrence Ferlinghetti said in his antiwar poem, 'There is some shit I will not eat'. But of course, he never became a successful actor".

"Yes, I have played a lot of killers in many of my projects. I don't know why I get cast for them so often. But it's enough of a tendency that you really should be smarter than that, asking me provocatively if I have ever 'actually' killed anyone. Are you looking for proof? If I were to kill someone, it would be someone like you".

"If, after putting your heart and soul and tears into it, giving it everything you have, you find that acting isn't working for you, do not despair. 'Meet the Spartans 2' will probably be casting later this year."