Acting Quotations

I had a lot of time to think in the service; I swore that, if I survived, nothing would keep me from an acting career.

Confidence has nothing to do with what you look like. If you obsess over that, you'll end up being disappointed in yourself all the time. Instead, high self-esteem comes from how you feel in any moment. So walk into a room acting like you're in charge, and spend your energy on making the people around you happy.

I love acting. When I'm acting I feel like I'm on vacation. I'm just having a wonderful time. The nightmare is just getting the work to happen.

My wife says that stage acting is like being on a tightrope with no net, and being in the movies, there is a net - because you stop and go over it again. It's very technical and mechanical. On stage you're on your own

It's so funny, you go to acting school thinking you're going to learn how to be other people, but really it taught me how to be myself. Because it's in understanding yourself deeply that you can lend yourself to another person's circumstances and another person's experience.

With modeling, you pose. You want to look your best all the time. With acting, you have to be aware of the camera, but the more you show your imperfections, the better you're going to be.

When I was 16, I played Macbeth at school and my English teacher said, 'I think you may have acting talent. Try to get into the National Youth Theatre of Great Britain and see where you get.' I wouldn't have thought of that at all. I wanted to be a surgeon, but I wasn't a clever man.

When in doubt, make a fool of yourself. There is a microscopically thin line between being brilliantly creative and acting like the most gigantic idiot on earth. So what the hell, leap.

An actor is totally vulnerable. His total personality is exposed to critical judgment - his intellect, his bearing, his diction, his whole appearance. In short, his ego.

Sincerity and the correct use of the voice are the greatest things in the art of acting.

Acting is magical. Change your look and your attitude, and you can be anyone.

The most difficult thing is the decision to act, the rest is merely tenacity. The fears are paper tigers. You can do anything you decide to do. You can act to change and control your life; and the procedure , the process is its own reward.

True freedom is the capacity for acting according to one's true character, to be altogether one's self, to be self-determined and not subject to outside coercion.

The great thing about acting is that, until you're dead, you can do it. There are aspects to it that as time goes on you hope you get better at, and there are a lot of things that I'm excited to explore.

I was 6, and I was in the opera 'Carmen.' My dad sang opera and got me into the children's chorus. I was super fat at the time and didn't make eye contact with anyone. I knew I loved acting ever since.

'Everwood' I think provides a unique feeling, an emotional experience. And other shows on TV don't have the acting talent to do that. Each one of our actors can do a serious scene and a humorous scene, and can do it all within the same sequence. They can go from a heartbreaking moment to a humorous moment.

I was fortunate enough to model, but it was always work for me. It was a way to support myself and finance acting classes.

I think sometimes soap acting gets an unfair label for being bad and over the top. The lessons I learned there were so valuable. Seeing yourself every day on television, you learned what worked and didn't work, what was bad acting and what wasn't. Memorizing scripts became second nature.

As a child, one of my defense mechanisms was to try to be funny. My mom tried to nurture that by putting me in acting class. But I got bored when we stopped pretending to be trees and actually had to work.

Acting is about enhancing your life, not representing something that's missing.

I never thought I'd be making a living off of acting - it's still kind of a shock for my family and friends to see my face on TV every Wednesday night.

With a recent birthday, I've been acting now for twenty years.

I like acting; I like being lost in the creative process.

I know that if I'd had to go and take an exam for acting, I wouldn't have got anywhere. You don't take exams for acting, you take your courage.

The only time I commit to conspiracy theories is when something way retarded happens. Like Lee Harvey Oswald acting alone.

If you hang around long enough to show these people what you can do, you have a chance in this acting business.

I remember once acting really cool on a bus with this girl named Stephanie. When I got home, I realized that I had a really big zit on my forehead. If you have acne problems, you really shouldn't be acting like Don Juan.

To me, the most important thing in life is to be a human being. Second is acting.

Modeling teaches you to be completely conscious of the camera. Acting is being totally unconscious of it.

At the end of the day, acting is all about telling lies. We are professional imposters and the audience accept that. We've made this deal that we tell you a tale and a pack of lies, but there will be a truth in it. You may enjoy it, or it will disturb you.

When you're young, you don't really know quite what you're aiming at. You're very impulsive and acting on impulse, which is very important and valuable. But you're kind of swimming in a blind sea. When you get older, you have more of a sense of direction.

I'm not sure that acting is something for a grown man to be doing.

The cool thing about working and meeting a lot of people through your acting is that you never know who you might work with, in the future.

When you stand on the stage you must have a sense that you are addressing the whole world, and that what you say is so important the whole world must listen.

Acting is all about truth and honesty, and the sensitivity that's capable of transporting you.

The only people who have doubts about the sincerity of my music are people who come to it relatively late, off the back of having seen me in a film. Acting is about being other people, and music is about being myself.

Acting is not that far from mental disease: An actor works on splitting his character into others. It is like a kind of schizophrenia.

Characters written in 1990 would be acting like idiots if they were cast into the present. For example, the reader might wonder: Why isn't she texting? Where's her cellphone? Can't she have a simple paternity test? For God's sake, look on the Internet and check him out!

Maybe subconsciously I've kept activism separate from acting because it's important to me in a more profound way.

They say making laws is like making sausages. You shouldn't watch. It's the same for acting, especially for the actor who works unconsciously.

Acting is an uncomfortable business because you have to make yourself vulnerable.

We were over in Europe all the time their posters were up. That's why I liked them. So now all of a sudden they're going to get a band hat on, and say people aren't acting the right way?

Why would anyone want to be famous, certainly not me. My only goal in an acting career is to be able to work full time as an actor, filmmaker. When I get to that level, which I will, in this business where I can spend one hundred percent of my time honing my craft, then I will be complete.

African-Americans are always forced to learn the other culture, but the other culture is not forced to learn ours. I went to acting school at Juilliard, and we learned Shakespeare and Shaw, but we never did the work of a single African-American playwright, not August Wilson or Ntozake Shange or Imir Baraka.

When you start so young working, you build a hunger for acting, working, and a busy life.

Acting has always been a way for me to express the emotions I had buried. If I hadn't acted, I would have gone insane. In my acting class, I could let out my real tears and everyone thought it was the character. But no, it was me.

I see all these people talking about acting as a great spiritual thing. It's not. There's no great mystery to acting. It's a very simple thing to do, but you have to work hard at it. It's about asking questions and using your imagination.

Whenever I get on stage, I feel safe and in control. Life can be so uncertain, but on stage, I always know how a drama or crisis is going to end. Acting is a great comfort blanket and has gotten me through countless personal crises. I am a firm believer that the show must go on.

I think this movie, 'Moneyball,' symbolizes becoming a man for me, and I think my character becomes a man. It's important to me: I'm becoming a man. I'm taking my life seriously. I'm taking my acting really seriously, and it's important for me to play adults. It's important for me to change and develop as I get older.

It's important to have people around you with enough confidence to say if you are not acting in a good way. Normally, when you are at the top, people say everything is fantastic. Probably in that moment it is what you want to hear, but it's best to be reminded how to act properly.

My first real acting gig was probably playing Mamillius in my mother's 'Winter's Tale.' My mom and dad are both in theater, so I grew up acting and being a little theater brat as well.

Method acting is a label I don't really understand, because there's a method to everybody's acting.

I know if I wasn't making music and acting, I would be involved in the performing arts world in some way. I would be either writing and making music for other artists or producing movies.

If I could make millions of dollars being a softball player, I would quit acting in a second.

This art of acting is a process I love very much. It's an unbelievably fulfilling experience for me and I look forward to building upon my art in the years to come.

I did a little bit of acting - some guest spots here and there. I got a job working as a therapist doing individual and group crisis intervention and family therapy. I did that for two years. I left to do 'Boston Legal.' So my psychology career has been interwoven into my acting career, and it's my safety net and fallback.

I can do everything with ease on the stage, whereas in real life I feel too big and clumsy. So I didn't choose acting. It chose me.

To be able to analyze plays and novels is so relevant to acting.

Acting like the person I'm supposed to be has always been the easiest thing for me.

I'm not the best actor I can be, so I'm just working on it. I'm not the quickest reader in the world but when I get an acting book I can read it in two days.

The great thing about acting is that you get to be a lot of different things in one lifetime. You get to explore different personalities and characters.

Poetry has, in a way, been my bridge to my acting career.

I want to use things I learn about writing in my acting, and vice versa.

Each song, you're telling a story and acting.

I argued that I didn't have any of the attributes to pose for cheesecake. I said I would have to make good on my acting ability, which was the only attribute I could offer.

I can hardly find the words to describe the peace I felt when I was acting. My dysfunctional self could actually plug in to another self, not my own, and it felt so good.

I am a soldier, convinced that I am acting on behalf of soldiers.

Acting gives you cosmic permission to take a trip in movies that lasts 24 hours a day, seven days a week, until the film is finished.

I find acting tough, but sitting around chatting - that's easy.

Acting means living, it's all I do and all I'm good at. If I weren't getting paid well, I would still be acting in a small troupe somewhere.

Bruce Lee only played himself. Chuck Norris is a martial artist that does acting. I want to be an actor that does martial arts.

I make movies for grownups. When Hollywood starts making them again, I'll start acting in them again.

The one thing that's closest to my story is the thing about trying out for the juvenile delinquent role and getting it. That was the start of my acting career... which I've resumed, by the way.

When I started performing, I decided that if in five years I couldn't earn as much money acting as I could as a teacher, it would be unrealistic for me to continue on the stage.

If this whole acting thing doesn't work out, I'll just get a talk show.

If all the circumstances of acting are made to easy, then there's no grain of sand to make the pearl.

There is no acting in a serial. You simply race through the reels.

Acting is the physical representation of a mental picture and the projection of an emotional concept.

For my first acting job I played the role of Ensign Pulver in 'Mr. Roberts' at the Manitoba Theatre Centre.

You get money out of acting. You get gray hair out of directing. Actually, I get more of a rush from directing.

Acting never crossed my mind for a moment when I was growing up.

Music is my life - acting's just a hobby.

There's sketch, improv, writing, acting, music, and badminton. Those are the seven forms of comedy.

My whole plan in my head has always been, if I go a year without acting, it's time to go home; it's time to go back to Montreal.

Acting is about acting, not about being a movie star.

Don't get married to an actress, because they're also actresses in bed.

Acting is my first focus, but at the core, I'm a storyteller, and however that comes out is fine with me.

Acting isn't something you do. Instead of doing it, it occurs. If you're going to start with logic, you might as well give up. You can have conscious preparation, but you have unconscious results.

I thought I'd be a journalist, and only pursued acting intermittently while studying. My very first interview as a journalist was with David Usher of Moist, and he called the magazine the next day to say it was the best interview he'd done for his solo album. I felt like a million euros.

I had no idea what it took to be an actor. Then all of a sudden I found myself cast in a TV drama. The director was very harsh with me. One time, he told me this would be my first and last acting job. I seriously thought that acting was not the right career for me.

I acted in high school and studied at the British American Drama Academy in Oxford for one summer. I minored in theater, and I was always acting growing up and stuff, but really, I was just more interested in the comedy of it all. So for me, it's always comedy, and then acting is just one medium of comedy.

Once I came to acting, it was almost a thing where there weren't enough hours in the day to work on stuff because I was so passionate about it.

The only thing I like about being an actress is acting.

Acting is easier than skating in a way and harder in other aspects. In skating, you get one chance, and with acting you get to do it over and over.

I think people respond to dystopian stories because they're ways of acting out anxieties that we have and fears that we have about the future. So much media's coming at you over the Internet, your brain gets overloaded. You don't know what to do with it. And one thing you can do with it is read a story.

I hadn't done just a straight-out comedy in a long time, just letting an ensemble do really good character acting, having them carry the movie as in my earlier pictures

I have done so much: modeling, acting, singing, the calendar, the lingerie line, and there have been times where I have wanted to give up but I went for it.

I think I first got into acting through church. I would go to these church retreats, and they would tell us to make a skit or make a video and present it to the rest of the group. And I started doing that. And I fell in love with it.

The post-'Merlin' era is an exciting time to look forward to. Variety is the spice of life. That's the fantastic thing about acting - all the different challenges it can provide you with. To limit yourself just to one would be foolish; therefore, I'm looking forward to different things that come my way.

I was never an actress in high school. I didn't start acting until I was in my twenties. I was just a funny cheerleader. I hadn't even seen a show until I was in my twenties, so I was very late getting into the business.