Quotes About Acting

We have so much access to one another through technology and everything else, that we're very much used to people being real. When folks go on TV and they're basically acting - if they were good actors they'd be acting and paid for it for a living, but they're not good actors. When we see bad acting, it doesn't look like bad acting, it looks weird, and we are turned off by it. I'm not talking about anybody in particular, that's just politics right now. This generation, I feel like, has incredible bullshit detectors.

Acting is not about competing. Acting is about cooperating. Acting is about collaboration. It's about your utility, your usefulness, your capacity to add to the work that has already been done and will be done. You're just part of a team. I never feel competitive about acting.

One of my heroes is Mr. Sidney Poitier. In his autobiography, "The Measure of a Man," he talks about the difference between being a great person and being a great actor. I'm happiest when I'm acting, and I've dedicated my life to it. Still, as much as I love acting, at the end of the day, I want to be remembered as a great person, first, and as a great actor, second. I believe that acting is a talent while being a great person encompasses so much more: being a good father, a good husband and the ability to show compassion for others.

I do very little on-camera acting, so within a phrase as a voice actor you have to know how to convey when someone is 95 years old or 19 years old. . . When I was the lead singer of the California Raisins commercials there was a traditional actor there as well and he would do all these body movements without saying anything because he was "acting." And the only acting the microphone picked up on was silence.

If you feel afraid, you can make yourself courageous by acting courageous. If you are feeling unhappy, by deliberately acting happy you can induce happy feeling. If you are lacking in enthusiasm, by simply acting enthusiastic you can make yourself enthusiastic.

I would rather do a play because it's instantaneous. You go on the stage, and you know whether it's happening or not. Somebody asked me 'What is acting?' And I said, 'Acting is listening.' And if you ain't listening, nobody's listening.

I know actors who say acting is acting, but I love the live-ness of an audience. I love feeling the energy of a room and allowing them to sort of teach you how to do it better.

With acting, I think half of it is just acting confident. We stand on these red carpets and pose in these dresses, but we're all only so confident. It doesn't mean we think we're great looking or anything. It's all a façade.

For me acting is a passion and an art, and always will only be that. I don't have any rules when it comes to acting. I'll do anything. But it depends on the script. Either I'll have passion for the project or I won't. It's got to fuel me.

British actors come at acting from a slightly different angle. Because a lot of the films are cast out there, they are so used to the angle from which the Americans, and certainly the young guys from LA, are coming at it, that I think it's interesting for them to find these English actors who maybe approach acting from a different place.

My belief about performance capture is that it's a technology which allows actors to play extraordinary characters. But from an acting perspective, I've never drawn a distinction between playing a conventional, live action character and playing a role in a performance capture suit. And from a purely acting point-of-view, I don't believe there should be a special Oscar category because I think it sort of muddies the waters in a way.

I’ve learned in a hundred ways that I rarely regretted acting but often regretted NOT acting fast enough.

Acting was my classroom in many ways and I always believed and I still do that acting is not just about pretending to be someone else, it's also about discovering yourself and reaching deeper inside yourself.

Acting for screen is very different from acting on stage, and then obviously when you dance... everything is a physical embodiment. But the discipline is the same approach. You have to take both things seriously; nothing well-crafted is by mistake.

It's always at the back of my mind that acting might come to an end for me when Harry Potter finishes. I don't know if I'm good enough to have a long career. I've got a bit of an inferiority complex about my acting. My self-esteem is quite low in that sense.

When I started studying acting in New York, I didn't plan to be an action hero. I just wanted to learn acting because I felt it was something I needed to try to do for myself, to express something, my inner pain, or something I couldn't get out.

I said, going into acting, 'I'm never moving to L.A.,' because it scared me. But there was no way you could build an acting career in Orange County.

As if one crime of such nature, done by a single man, acting individually, can be expiated by a similar crime done by all men, acting collectively.

When I first started getting into acting, I was doing improv in acting class, and I had done a serious monologue and everyone was cracking up laughing and I went to the drama teacher and said I don't want to be the class clown anymore, I want to do serious work, too, and they loved that, and so I started mixing in drama.

It was the desire to do the complete thing. I only took taking acting lessons because my whole thing, really, was to direct. But my first jobs were acting jobs.

I feel like God has moved me into a different way of doing things. I teach basic on-camera acting class called Acting 101...In my classroom, the students get every ounce of encouragement and craft and anything I'm able to give them.We have some rules. We don't take the name of The Lord in vain. We don't use foul language when we mess up on camera...There's a climate of safety...They feel very protected.

The foundation for film acting is stage acting.

I took my first acting class at age 6 because I found out that's what Carol Burnett was doing - acting. Also she had an imaginary friend as a kid and went to UCLA, two things we have in common. I will always admire her and hope one day, I can make someone laugh a fraction as hard as she's made me bellyache.

Acting didn't solve much! If it did, I would have ended up much less crazy than I am today, but I'm not. At least for me, acting is a relief - a relief to be able to admit certain things about myself and disguise in my work, in my characters.

Remember, acting is not a business of glamour. It is science, craft and an art. Read about acting; don't do it for the sake of fun. Actors such as Paresh Rawal and Naseeruddin Shah are great examples; they are surviving only because they have read well.

There was a time in my acting career, where I was trying to figure out if acting was the thing to do. You know? I was always on this journey of trying to learn more about humanity and people - using the characters and situations as guideposts. I could switch up and do another job as long as I'm continuing that same search and that same journey of revealing my connection to humanity and the universe. And directing gives me the opportunity to explore ALL these different lives and their connection to their environments and the people. And I get to connect to the wires of the universe.

Adults acting like children and children acting like adults is generally a pretty reliable comic device.

I think one of the things that might distinguish me is when I'm going to work as an actor I really try not to worry about my own personal hang-ups and just really concentrate on the work. Because I have such a respect for acting, which is something I feel like I'm constantly learning how to do, that all of my energy is always focused on the acting itself.

I think acting is a gift. I look at someone like Ben Kingsley, and hes incredibly charismatic, even when hes not acting. Hes an incredibly hard worker, and he has a very specific system that he does with his work.

I remember hearing someone say that good acting is more about taking off a mask than putting one on, and in movie acting, certainly that's true. With the camera so close, you can see right down into your soul, hopefully. So being able to do that in a way is terrifying, and in another way, truly liberating. And I like that about it.

When I'm acting I don't sing, and when I'm recording I'm not acting.

I'm not really sure if I have anything that inspires me. I think what goes into my work is everything beforehand that I do with my dad. He teaches me acting, and I think maybe without him it would be pretty hard. I started acting for fun, really, because my dad's an actor and my sister's an actor, so I started doing it and it was normal. But it got places really fast, and I started doing feature film auditions and stuff.

Acting in particular is a fun job when you have a good script. I don't know about acting when you don't have a great script. I'm gonna say that's not a great job, it's kind of a dumb job. But when you have a good part in a good script, it's the best job, in a way.

The acting thing is so beyond my control. Acting isn't mine. You're like a tiny piece in this big, corporate mechanism that needs chemistry and divine intervention.

Secrets are great for acting. Secrets are the best thing in the world for acting, because they keep you looking like you have something in the back of your mind.

I have a theory about that, if you have to say something, if you have encourage for one second a prospective acting student - he should not go in to acting.

Another challenge? Getting up at 6:30 in the morning to go act. It's not fun acting that early in the morning or acting at 4 A.M in the middle of the night or in the morning when you're really tired. That's a challenge. What a luxurious problem to have.

We have fun acting like this, acting like we are incredibly offended. Really, we are just bored to tears with everything.

Acting for me is not a bad habit like smoking that I must make an effort to quit. I love acting; I love directing.

Every film by Will Smith, Harry Belafonte, Sidney Poitier, Lena Horne, Ruby Dee, Don Cheadle will have great acting and carry good messages in the film. The films starring those actors are the films I tell young people to watch for good acting and to view for quality movies.

My education was a huge influence. I trained at the Lee Strasberg Institute at Tisch, which is a huge foundation for young actors. They teach you their methods, and give you the sense that acting is much more tangible than most people think. I think there's a mysticism of what acting is, in the fact that it's this ungraspable, spur-of-the-moment thing that nobody can understand.

Make acting seem real and as if it werent acting. Just make it real.

All of modern acting comes from Stanislavski, who was the Russian partner to Chekhov. When Chekhov was writing his plays, Stanislavski was running his theater. And Stanislavski really was the first inventor of modern acting and then everything that came out of the method and Stella Adler and the great teachers really came out of him.

The point of acting is to pretend you're someone else and sell a story.

A book is maybe about 350 pages, and the prose allows for readers to get a glimpse into the internal lives of the characters. A screenplay is 120 pages, and it's all dialogue and action. The pacing of films is different, the structure is often different, and the internal lives of the characters must come across through the acting. Movies are just a different experience than reading - so it just depends on what an individual prefers.

I definitely have a tendency to only see the blemishes of things, and see lots of things about my acting that I don't like.

Having a live audience makes a world of difference to the acting. It keeps your timing sharp. When something doesn't work, the actor can sense the reaction from the audience and quickly move on.

But we make such mistakes all the time, all through our lives. Wisdom, I suppose, is seeing this and acting upon it before it is too late. But it is often too late, isn't it? - and those things that we should have said are unsaid, and remain unsaid for ever.