Daily Inspiration Quote by Robin Tunney

Acting, Robin Tunney suggests, isn’t one talent but a toggling posture: the urge to throw versus the discipline to receive. “Pitching” is the familiar, showy instinct - driving the rhythm, landing the line, signaling emotion so the audience can’t miss it. It’s also the trap actors fall into when they’re nervous or trying to “make it good”: pushing choices outward, polishing the moment into something deliverable.

“Catching” is the quieter power move. It implies listening as an active craft, not a polite pause while you load your next bit. Catching means letting the other actor’s behavior actually change you, in real time, and trusting that the camera (or the room) will find the story without you underlining it. The subtext is a critique of performance-as-projection: if you’re always pitching, you’re treating your scene partner like a wall. Catching turns them into a source.

Tunney comes out of an era where naturalism became a mainstream expectation - indie-derived restraint meeting TV and film close-ups that punish theatrical overstatement. Her framing also nods to ensemble ethics: great scenes aren’t solo arias, they’re exchanges with timing, give-and-take, and vulnerability. Pitching can be control; catching is risk. The quote works because it reduces a notoriously mystical job into a physical metaphor any viewer can feel: the difference between watching someone try to impress you and watching someone actually be affected. In that gap lies the kind of truth audiences call “chemistry,” even when it’s really just attention.