“Memorization is, there’s nothing exciting about it, it’s drudgery, it’s repetition, it’s finding words that are similar sometimes.” – Jeff Daniels
Last November, Emmy Award-winning and Tony Award-nominated actor Jeff Daniels completed a year-long run playing Atticus Finch in the Broadway adaptation of To Kill a Mockingbird. It’s one of many stage roles that Daniels has appeared in (he’s a three-time Tony Award nominee). He’s also the founder of the Purple Rose Theatre Company (named after one of the most famous films he appeared in, 1985’s The Purple Rose of Cairo) in Chelsea, Michigan, and has penned several plays of his own.
In short, Daniels has an obvious love for acting on stage and, while speaking about how to “make it” in Hollywood to Vanity Fair, Daniels revealed his insight on memorizing lines — something every actor must excel at to become a success.
“Memorization is, there’s nothing exciting about it, it’s drudgery, it’s repetition, it’s finding words that are similar sometimes. Sometimes it’s that technical, find a sentence with R-E, it’s got refuse in it, and then later on in a sentence it’s require. Just circle the re and the re. Now it’s you know that it’s the require… the refuse, or whatever it is. Just little stepping stones across the river, which is the sentence. Then, musically, your mouth has to get used to saying these words together right now. Your mouth is memorizing where it’s going to go next. Singers do this all the time. There’s this kind of muscle memory for the lips and the cheeks, and the mouth. That comes from the brain being able to memorize it, all words, all syllables, then run it 100 miles an hour.”
“When you can do that, all of that stuff, then you add in the motivations, and all that, but you can slide some of those into and then the next thing you know, you don’t even think about it, and you’re reeling off pages and pages and pages.”
