Acting is not about showing what you're feeling. It's about doing something. It's about what you're doing for the other person. Anything other than 'doing' is not grounded in the truth.
— Lucas Hedges
I don't have social media. I don't have Facebook or Instagram or Snapchat.
If I have a career in theater, and nobody knows who I am, I'm all right with that.
The ten-block radius around my house in Brooklyn has been my whole world. When I walk on the street, I feel like I've rediscovered my childhood innocence. I love it because nothing has changed.
I would absolutely be interested in doing a Broadway production if it was the right project. But my dream is to be writing pieces of theater for my best friends and putting on plays in New York City and seeing our vision come alive. I just hope to always be creating.
I grew up in a film-loving family. We watched the Oscars every year. My favorite thing in the whole world was film. The Oscars obviously was the holy grail.
In high school, I made friends with people in every social group. Or at least that's how I perceived it. I thought they liked me. Maybe they didn't!
I'm not sure I would want to be a filmmaker, because I've seen how many people they have to go through in order to create their own movie. It doesn't seem like something I can imagine putting myself through.
I did the plays in middle school. I was cast as a gate in my fourth grade play, and every year I got a bigger role. Then, in 7th grade, I played Smike in 'Nicholas Nickleby,' and the casting director saw me and asked me to audition for a movie. That movie led to me getting 'Moonrise Kingdom.'
I think it's true of every great comedy that it's rooted in some dramatic, incredibly personal truth. And it's true of all great drama that there has to be comedy.
I know that I want to consistently return to doing plays. That's one of the most important things because I think it's the best place for me to learn how to act.
I have allergic reactions: it triggers my gag reflex when I read unrealistic dialogue from a teenager.
I grew up playing squash. I have all these squash trophies in my room... I was, like, third in the country.
My dad's a filmmaker, and my mom's an actress. She was the original understudy, actually, for Harper in 'Angels in America' and did the show for about several months while she was pregnant with my older brother. And so I grew up obsessed with film and filmmaking.
You're living your life the entire time in both worlds - it's not like they say, 'Action' and you're like, 'Here we go, we're in this thing,' because that's where bad acting comes from.
When I was in high school, I tried too hard to be cool and to impress people, but playing all these different characters has helped me find myself again.
I did a theater program the summer of my junior year, and that's when I really fell in love with the craft of acting. It became more about the craft and less about being a working actor.
I'd love to do a love story. I've never done a true love story, which would be awesome. But then again, I don't think I've had a true love story, even in my own life. Maybe that's something I want to explore in my own life first.
I never really thought it would be possible to keep making films. I thought I'd get to a point where it would just stop happening, and I still sort of feel that way. I don't know if any actor feels like they are going to have a career forever, unless they're a movie star.
My problem with my parents growing up was not that I was afraid to cry in front of them - they always wanted me to cry because they wanted me to be okay, but it felt kind of icky and gross to cry in front of my parents. So my problem was the polar opposite - I didn't want to cry in front of them because I didn't want to give them the satisfaction.
Technically, my first paying job was I was an extra in my dad's movie 'Dan in Real Life.'
I believe that a great character can be made in one scene, or a few moments.
It's nauseating for me when I feel like I'm not growing or challenging myself.
I don't know what's in store for me, but I know that I want to create work, and I want to create an environment where I can bring in my favorite people and collaborate with them, and do something that is so much weirder and so different from what you'd see in commercial film.
If I did have social media, I would spend way to much time on it. It is way too addictive for me.
The first thing I ever auditioned for was a movie called 'Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close.' And, this is kind of a secret, but it came down between me and the one other kid for it, but I didn't get it, so.
This is my life! I'm not getting a lot of sleep, but I am getting a lot of frequent-flyer miles.
In my bedroom, I have my yoga mat and the puppets I've made over the years, and because I'm very into smells, I have some burned sage on my bedside to help clear my head.
All it really takes to fall in love with a script is to understand, right off the bat, one piece of the story.
The more you learn to love yourself, the better actor you will be. That's always going to be my training. Every part is, 'How can I learn to love myself more?'
I meditate - very pretentious - and I try to read as much as I can and swim at the Y.
The great thing about scenes that involve nervous breakdowns - in the little experience I have doing them - is that there's no way to craft it. You just have to do it, and it sort of crafts itself in just being incredibly messy.
It's almost like the psychology of a film is no different from the psychology of a person in that it has to function, it has to breathe, it has to have its releases, it has anxiety.
I am somebody who never came close to a physical altercation, because I was too scared of even getting near one - I'd probably just start crying.
I think I was born to be a clown. I just haven't figured out how to bring that side of myself into the world of filmmaking. It's much more comfortable for me to cry on a film set than it is to tell a joke.
Ultimately, I think what I want from my career is to be able to create work for myself, and there's only so much you can do as an actor in a movie.
