Michael Caine on Doing Nothing

From RogerEbert.com:

"The hardest thing for an actor to do is to do nothing," he says. "You're not just standing there while Pele's playing with the ball. You have to project your interest. There's no such thing as a shot where you're not acting. That goes back for me to my days on the stage . . . I was standing there once and my director shouted, 'What's the matter with you!' Nothing, I said, 'That's the bloody trouble! You should be standing there with 1,000 possible lines jammed into your brain, trying to decide which one to use. Nobody just stands around thinking nothing -- except a bad actor without lines.'

"I've always remembered that. It helps me to look interested. I don't worry about the last shot, or the next shot. I concentrate. Every shot gets a clean slate. And when a shot is over, I wipe it out absolutely. Tell a joke or something. If you worry about how you looked, how well you did, you'll go insane. You can never tell until you see the scene on a screen."