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I think of myself as a problem-solver. I want to go in and help the director and the writer to get the best they can out of the text they're working with.
Michael Emerson
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Michael Emerson
Age: 70
Born: 1954
Born: September 7
Actor
Film Actor
Stage Actor
Television Actor
Cedar Rapids
Iowa
mike
Thinking
Directors
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Help
Helping
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Solver
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Text
Think
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More quotes by Michael Emerson
Preaching styles and people being slain in the spirit and things like that. Now it doesn't happen in all black churches, and it happens sometimes in white churches, right? But on average they're quite a bit different.
Michael Emerson
One of the things I like about performing on the stage is that it is a kind of meditative experience. Time does stand still. You have no concept or feeling of the passing of two or three hours' time. It's all kind of one present moment, which is a kind of a description of meditation.
Michael Emerson
I've been blessed by doing classic plays on Broadway, which was one of my great dreams forever.
Michael Emerson
So the tradition from Europe is that you're supposed to emphasize the mind over the body, so you sing from a very kind of staid perspective. Again, there are charismatic white congregations all over, and they don't sing that way. But, you know, on the average.
Michael Emerson
I think it's easier, I really do, because of not having that similar history, so that's why I think two-thirds of these mixed congregations are either white with Asian and Hispanic, or black with Asian and Hispanic.
Michael Emerson
It's one of the things we find in these congregations is that they are much more likely to be sort of up-beat worship styles, more likely that people in these congregations say Amen, maybe get up and dance some, tend to be a little bit more lively than a typical white service would be, but not as lively as a typical black service would be.
Michael Emerson
I think people respond to villains because people in general are more villainous than heroic.
Michael Emerson
So you find a lot of these sixth Americans congregate in these interracial congregations. They hang out together at work, at school, wherever.
Michael Emerson
My mother always told me growing up I had a punchable face. Little did I know she was predicting my television career.
Michael Emerson
In your actor's heart, you know when you're playing well. Others may not always agree with you, but I'm always aware of when the scene is cooking or not. You have an instinct about that from years of doing scenes and plays, and I think it stands you in good stead even in the TV world.
Michael Emerson
They could never go back to being a uniracial congregation again. It brings excitement. It brings life. It allows them to be able to know people they would never know, to meet people that are outside the congregation they would have never connected with, you know, through the networks that they developed in the congregation.
Michael Emerson
Downsides, yeah, and when there are more downsides when churches first start - they go through stages of transforming to becoming multiracial. So in the beginning stages there's often a lot of pain, a lot of confusion, a lot of people leave.
Michael Emerson
We've had people say, Now when I go to work, I don't feel uncomfortable talking to people of different races, and I go up and introduce myself, and I start making a new friend I wouldn't have done otherwise.
Michael Emerson
It may be changing, but still it's the one place, that total control of an institution, that African Americans have. So sometimes, you know, you'll hear the statement of African Americans saying, I have to work with whites.
Michael Emerson
I may have to shop with them. But on Sunday I don't want to have to worship with them. I want to be able to just be myself and let my hair down. It's also, of course, as we know, the seat of political organization and the affirming of your blackness and so on.
Michael Emerson
And then they would have the shoe removers on one side, and the non-shoe removers on the other side until they could work through coming to understand why we might both be trying to worship authentically, and because of our cultural background we have these different ideas. But it took a while.
Michael Emerson
And again, this connection that you get: I meet Joe at church. Joe's connected to a whole network of people I don't know. Joe likes me. He invites me over to his son's birthday party, and I meet his whole family. I meet his friends. I get to know his neighborhood. That happens all the time.
Michael Emerson
Now they had to sit in separate places and sometimes they'd even have to sit outside and look through the windows. But they did worship together.
Michael Emerson
To a large extent, people's interest in the character is the mystery of the character.
Michael Emerson
I think whites are used to being in power, so when whites think we ought to have integrated churches they think, People ought to come to our church. What can we do to get them to come?
Michael Emerson
