Popular quotes about Acting! Wisdom and inspiration are here! | page 12
I am far from sure when I am acting and when I am not or, should I more frankly put it, when I am lying and when I am not. For what is acting but lying and what is good acting but convincing lying?
Laurence OlivierYou don't have that interaction with the audience when you're acting for film; you're kind of acting in a vacuum. You're acting for a disinterested grip who just wants to reply to his wife about what time he'll be home for dinner. Everyone else on a film set is also there because they're paid to be there. They're not there because they're passionate about what you do necessarily.
Lola KirkeThe effort to improve the conditions of man, however, is not a task for the few. It is the task of all nations-acting alone, acting in groups, acting in the United Nations, for plague and pestilence, plunder and pollution, the hazards of nature and the hunger of children are the foes of every nation. The earth, the sea and the air are the concern of every nation. And science, technology and education can be the ally of every nation.
John F. KennedyI like both music and acting, and they both have a lot in common - timing, immediacy, stuff like that. But acting is more regimented. You wait around for hours, you don't get to write the script, you get hired. Music represents me better. I'm not acting; I'm just expressing myself.
Lukas HaasI 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.
Jim CummingsI don't even know if acting's something I want to do the rest of my life. There's a lot of other things I'm interested in, too. But as long as there are good roles out there and I'm enjoying myself, I wouldn't mind being some little octogenarian and continuing on the fight. But that's not really where I place my happiness, so acting to me is always a bonus. Acting is definitely a very pleasant bonus in my life, and I've enjoyed it completely.
Chris DemetralAnd then, one acting class turned into two, turned into four, and then turned into, "I love this. I could do this for the rest of my life. But, I don't have a background in acting. I never acted in college, or did anything like that. How can I go about doing this?" That meant going to grad school and getting some training, and I did. I literally walked down the path. It was real fortuitous for me to walk by that school, that one morning.
Tim KangWhen you drop your guard in films, the acting process compensates. You get lazy and you start acting.
Ben KingsleyAnd then in the FBI report it says that Hillary Clinton can't remember her exit interview from the FBI because of her concussion because she didn't have a memory. But she was acting as secretary of state at the time which means we had a secretary of state who was acting who doesn't have a memory of what she was doing.
Rudy GiulianiActing is the only thing I'm even vaguely good at and acting is something that I think I do know about.
Martin FreemanBasically, the prosecutor who led case against me and that administration were trying to say that an actor can be held responsible for his acting, thousands of miles away from where he did the acting. The analogy would be if an artist painted a nude painting in New York City, and it was met with accolades and great reviews. And suddenly, somebody from Texas bought it and put it in their shoe store and it was found to be obscene in Texas, the artist in New York is responsible, and goes to jail because it's obscene in Texas.
Harry ReemsI do have the ability to explore life and to be over the moon at the smallest thing - a few pints and a craic in the pub and I'm in heaven. But I have a melancholy side to me as well. Acting allows me to feel things, it kind of buys me human experience. And I don't mean this as acting as higher cause, because it's not, but it does kind of have a higher awareness emotionally.
Colin FarrellI approach every film I do in the same way, whether it's an action film or not an action film. I guess if a certain physicality lends itself to action, but I started acting before I reached puberty. I was 7 years old when I started acting. It wasn't until I became a bouncer in New York.
Vin DieselWith old liars who have been acting all their lives there are moments when they enter so completely into their part that they tremble or shed tears in earnest, although at that very moment, or a second later, they are able to whisper to themselves, "You know you are lying, you shameless old sinner! You're acting now, in spite of your 'holy' wrath.
Fyodor DostoevskyAt some point you have to stop acting as though life is happening to you and acknowledge the ways you are happening to it. Once you take responsibility for your side of the street, you grant yourself the power to improve every aspect of your life by simply acting and behaving differently.
Jillian MichaelsMy favorite thing about acting is being alone and going through the scripts and working on it and getting ideas and asking myself questions, looking outside myself for them and researching and getting to the bottom of something and being creative with it as an actor and how to express it in a creative fashion. That's my favorite part. And, the actual acting of it.
Philip Seymour HoffmanI 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.
Michelle PfeifferWell, I think one of the main things that you have to think about when acting in the movies is to try not to make the acting show.
James StewartWhen we say gender is performed, we usually mean that weve taken on a role or were acting in some way and that our acting or our role playing is crucial to the gender that we are and the gender that we present to the world.
Judith ButlerActing requires focus, too, but acting doesn't, you might say, demand focus. When you're in the ring you don't even have to think about focus because the danger is so imminent. Imminent. You train and you prepare and then the adrenaline kicks in and drives you into focusing intensely. You'd better focus, right? Or else you'll make your exit on a stretcher.
Bette Ford(The) process of acting is no different to conventional screen acting, in that it's providing a perfect interface between the director and the performer. So there's no sort of long way around a viral committee of animators.
Andy SerkisThere are a few pretty fundamental differences. In voice acting, if you are doing game recording, for the most part you are going to be by yourself in a studio. With game voice acting you are constructing everything for yourself pretty much. You're thinking about what the other characters could be doing, trying to imagine the scene, you're constructing the entire environment for yourself.
Ashly BurchEither in or out of time, the decision of a personal agency to commit an action happens antecedent to the action itself. Even if the deciding and the acting happened simultaneously, it would still not be true that the acting was antecedent to the deciding. Imagine God saying, "Oh, look! I just created a universe. Now I'd better decide to do it.
Dan BarkerWriting is as big a part of my career as acting is, financially and time wise. So, yeah, I love it. That's all I wanted to do since I was young was be a writer. So that and acting are the two most important aspects of my career.
Jonah HillAs much as I love acting and I hope to be doing it for a long time, it almost feels more natural for me to be a producer. I came into all of this because I'm a fan of movies and I wanted to find any way I could to be a part of it all. I happened to take the acting route but it could have been a million different ways in. Now that I'm producing it's just really fun for me to work with people that I really admire and put people together who I think will work well together. Just having a little more control.
Dave FrancoI guess part of my ambivalence about pursuing music as well as acting is that acting is already one of the most difficult careers to create for yourself, I must be insane to embark on creating two careers in two of the most difficult fields. But I have really different ambitions with music; I just want to stay in love with music. I want it to continue to be a means of expression for me that feels like it's mine, and something that feels community-based.
Lola KirkeBallet has really helped me in every acting role. You have to be very disciplined, you have to be able to control your nerves and perform under pressure, and all those things you have to use in acting when you're on film or going for an audition.
Mia WasikowskaAdults acting like children and children acting like adults is generally a pretty reliable comic device.
Seth MacFarlaneI've always had an itch for acting and a passion for acting, but never really got to dabble into it too much, and now I can say I'm officially an acrtress.
Becky GI am very happy acting, and just have never gone at, or been bitten by the directing bug to the extent where I'm willing to put acting aside. If offered the opportunity, I think I could do a good job with the right material.
Stephen LangWe need to practice acting in spite of fear, in spite of doubt, in spite of worry, in spite of uncertainty, in spite of inconvenience, in spite of discomfort, and even to practice acting when we're not in the mood to act.
T. Harv EkerBuddhism doesn't really have much time for political mass-movements. We are so trained to think of politics in terms of acting collectively, acting as part of mass-movements, that it's become hard for us to imagine a form of politics that is based on a high degree of introspection and self-examination.
Pankaj MishraIt's important to have a fallback and other activities that keep you interested. I started acting when I was about nine or 10 years old. My father was a midtown firefighter so I always wanted to be a firefighter, but then acting came along. I have to have a plan B.
Jake T. AustinThe most difficult thing about acting and directing in a film is acting and directing in a film. Every ounce of your physical and emotional being, and your analytical and thoughtful and producorial being, is being exercised at all points. You are 100% working on overdrive, but because it is only for X amount of days, if you have the stomach for it, you hustle through. It's a massive undertaking, and I think preparation is the key to success for that endeavor.
Lake BellI was always interested in acting, but in my high school sports was the cool thing to be part of, and I was still very into being cool. So I played a lot of basketball and football. But I always had that want to be in theater and to be a part of theater arts. But in my school, it was just a really nerdy thing to be a part of. Everyone in my school wore bowler hats - they were always on, always acting, and all so big. I was like, "I can't be that", even though I wanted to be.
Cedric YarbroughSinging was my first love and I never even considered it after I started acting, but now I'm bringing it back into my life. I trained from the ages of 11 to 17. When I moved to New York and got into serious acting, I just kind of abandoned the whole singing thing. But when I grew up in Pennsylvania I went to voice lessons once a week.
Amanda SeyfriedThe next night I got on an airplane, and flew to New York and looked into acting schools. Four or five acting schools. One of which was the Neighborhood Playhouse, which I started at six months there after.
Dabney ColemanActing for me is not a bad habit like smoking that I must make an effort to quit. I love acting; I love directing.
Joan ChenWith acting, there are a lot of subtleties and non-verbals involved. If someone is over there, getting eaten by a shark, there's a non-verbal way of how to act that. There's a certain nuance to acting that does not come intuitively to me. It's something I still have to learn.
Mark McGrathI don't like to intellectualize about my acting. I don't sit around and study the pages of a script over and over again. I don't worry whether the period is contemporary or three hundred years ago. Human beings are all alike. The main thing in acting is honesty, to feel the humanity and get to the essence of the character. You can't put anything into a character that you haven't got within you.
Genevieve BujoldI realized that a dancer's life is very short and I had so much of a creative energy in me that I needed outlets to do other things so that's when I started acting more and it all kind of blended together. When you're on stage you're acting and you're dancing, it started blended together now.
Vanessa Bell CallowayMy take is that acting is acting. A performance is a performance. With performance capture, if you don't get the performance on the day, you can't enhance the performance.
Andy SerkisThere is one scene where he is kissing up my back. It is really sexy and I didn't know he was going to do it. He started doing it and in the film you see me saying, whew, and that wasn't acting, that was really me thinking, whew, oh my goodness Daniel Craig is kissing my back! I really did. I had to stop and remind myself that I was playing a character and I was acting in a film.
Gemma ArtertonPractice following your intuition in everyday things, trusting your gut feelings moment by moment and acting on them as best you can. As you learn to trust yourself in smaller matters, you will build power and confidence to take bigger risks and deal with the larger issues in your life successfully.
Shakti GawainI'm not going back to acting class, although I've thought of it. The classic training that people get usually when they start out, I never had, and I always felt and still feel the lack of it, so there's a lot of basic stuff that I just don't have a clue about.
Margot KidderI think a big part of my job is to make an atmosphere on set and have an attitude that it's about experimentation, and you can't do anything wrong. It's not about judgment, it's not about me kicking over a chair and storming onto set and acting stuff out and telling people to copy what I do. That is a style of directing some people have, but I don't understand it.
Ben Wheatley