Finn Wittrock Quotations

I want to keep pushing my boundaries. One of the biggest things I learned from 'Unbroken' is that you can go a lot further than you think you can. We often underestimate our actual capabilities.

Theres monsters in all of us, but theres also vulnerability.

Ryan Murphy, he basically tries to find something that's a pulse, a pressure point in our culture, and he grabs it, and he squeezes it. I think 'Freak Show' has a lot to do with the entertainment industry and the way we entertain ourselves: the objectification of people and the lengths we'll go for our own amusement.

Thats one of my real goals is to keep theater in my life.

I started writing when I started acting professionally because, with acting, there's so much time when you're not working, and there's so much rejection and so little you have control of. Writing is something that you can do, and no one can tell you not to.

I'm usually late to the game on shows and watch them after they've aired. But I love 'House of Cards,' 'The Killing,' 'Orange Is the New Black,' loved 'True Detective,' and 'Arrested Development' when it was on. Also 'The Wire,' though I was way late to the game on that.

Soap operas are like boot camps for film actors, so I really learned a lot. It was a masterclass in working for camera. I made myself watch myself every day. I would sort of try and be objective about it and critique myself a little. There's a lot more skill set than people realize in soap operas. They shoot, like, 35 scenes a day.

Sometimes you're watching a great film actor, and if you stand 10 feet away from them, you're like, 'God, they're terrible. They're not doing anything.' And then you see the close-up, and it's so nuanced, and so much expression is happening. They were acting for that camera and for no one else.

I've learned 90 percent of what I know from watching and listening to actors. A good leading actor is the rock of the show. Their energy and their tone really sets the groundwork for how everything is going to work. I've been lucky to deal with stars who are very giving and generous.

I caught the acting bug from my dad.

I would love to do Shakespeare in New York.

I would love to play Henry IV, Henry V, and Hamlet.

Writing is something Ive always done on the side. I thought that no one would be interested, so I kept it to myself.

A lot of the stuff that's happening now, I can trace back to 'Death of a Salesman.' Francine Maisler, the casting director, saw 'Death of a Salesman' and called me in for 'Unbroken.' The casting director of 'Normal Heart' had seen 'Salesman' too. I look back on it now, and it's like one thing led to another; it was a chain reaction.

At first, before you meet her, you're like, 'I'm gonna meet Angelina Jolie! I'm talking to Angelina Jolie!' And then, within a matter of five minutes, you're like, 'Oh, I'm just talking to my director,' and it's just back to work. She really is all about the work. She's so surprisingly down-to-earth.

Film and television are so piecemeal. You do one scene, and then you put it to bed, and then you do a scene that comes before. In a play, you have to go from beginning to end every night, and that's harder, but also more fulfilling in a way.

I have been thinking a lot about what we see in villains, how we relate to villains, and what it is about certain villains that we actually empathize with. Like Macbeth. We're not supposed to like a guy who kills the king and takes over, but there's something about him we're really fascinated by.

I think in some ways, acting and writing are the same. You're getting inside the skin of someone else; you're creating their language and their actions. As a writer, you have to see the whole picture and the structure, and you have to understand every character.

I was playing a defensive guard in 'My All American' who is a really fast runner, so a lot of my training was running. I wasn't too worried about bulking up because he was supposed to be on the small side.

I went to an Arts High School, so everyone there was kind of anti-clique, though they still happened. I guess I was in the theatre-dork clique. Not to be confused with the musical-theatre-dork clique.

In film, you're so much in the hands and at the mercy of the editor, so sometimes it's good to watch it just to see how it turns out - it can be so different than how you imagined it. But sometimes it's better to just let it go for your own sense of self worth.

So many actors started on soap operas. So yeah, I'd graduated Julliard and done some theater. I've done a few guest spots on TV but nothing that long-term. I did a little 'E.R.' back when it was on, and a pilot for 'Cold Case.'

I found L.A. much less responsive to the name Juilliard than New York was. In New York, that name actually means something. People will look up from their desks when you walk in. In L.A. it's, 'Oh yeah, that's a music school. What do you play?'

Doing theater anywhere, especially in L.A., is a constant uphill battle, and there's also the unsexy parts of the business that you're faced with, like getting money. It's a really great thing to do. You feel like you're really an artist when you're doing that and you're in a company of artists.

I played baseball growing up, second base, and then when I got to high school,it just didn't exist there.

Physically, I was always moving. I was always a little jittery.

The best villains are the nicest guys in person.

As an actor, you look at some people and know if they're there with you or not.

You can imagine an already unstable mind that's completely entitled and has been given anything they wanted, throughout their whole life, and lived in a bubble with a domineering, in a very quietly manipulating way, mother, that child mentality never gets a chance to mature and discover its own limitations. It just runs rampant.

What you always try to do, as an actor, is find the thing that's universal in the person.

You learn a lot about acting and being physical and being on stage, but there is technical stuff on camera that you can't learn until you do it.

I played baseball growing up, second base, and then when I got to high school,it just didnt exist there.

We all have monsters inside of us, and we all have an inner child in us. You always think about your inner child as being the sweet and innocent part of yourself, but it's also the part that's all ego with the mentality of, "If the world isn't pleasing me, it isn't doing its job."