Walton Goggins: The Best Advice He’s Ever Received
“An imaginary set of circumstances.”
Everything I could teach you
I could teach you in five minutes
And it’s for free,
And you’ll save yourself a lot of money,
And a lot of time.
First and foremost,
It’s a child’s game.
Right?
It’s turning yourself over to
An imaginary set of circumstances.
If you talk to a child,
And you say,
“I want you to play Anne Boleyn.”
The first thing a child will say is,
“Who’s Anne Boleyn?”
Then you tell them,
Then they’ll play that.
— — —
He only quoted three people:
Anthony Hopkins,
Jessica Tandy,
And Robert Duvall.
He just said,
“Listen, they read the script 250 times,
And they turn themselves over to
An imaginary set of circumstances.”
When I was 24,
I did The Apostle
With Robert Duvall.
The first time we went out to dinner
I said, “Tell me if this is bullshit?
It’s what my teacher says you do.”
And he said,
“That’s exactly what I do.”
Two years later,
I worked with Anthony Hopkins.
And I said,
“I got a question for you, Tony.
Is this bullshit, or is this what you do?”
And he said,
“I read the script 250 times,
And I turn myself over to
An imaginary set of circumstances.”
— — —
It’s that simple.
I don’t think you play a character.
I don’t think you make choices.
I think you read something 250 times.
It’s no different doing this,
Than it is doing
The Laura Ingalls Wilder
Movie of the Week
I did in 1999.
It’s the same.
Right?
You just do the work
And you show up
And you do the best
With what you got
In the time that you got.
— Walton Goggins,
Conversations at the SAG-AFTRA Foundation (2024)