Finn Wittrock Quotes

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."

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

I would love to do Shakespeare in New York.

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 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.

The best villains are the nicest guys in 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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.