Quotes About Acting

I went to theater school, and if I spent time with one school of thought in this whole acting game, it's the Meisner approach of improvise-based acting. This does not mean that you improvise your acting, but that you focus on the other person.

You 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.

Good acting is about reacting, not tryingto express something, but reacting to a situation as the character.I don't like acting acting.

I find any sort of acting that doesn't have any humor in it is mind-numbingly boring. 'Serious acting' is the kind of acting that I don't ever respond to.

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 say I like expressing myself in different ways. The way I can express myself in songs is awesome. What you can express through acting is cool too. I just want to let it all out. I like them both for different reasons, though. Music has a freedom that acting doesn't really have, and acting presents a challenge that music necessarily doesn't.

She didn't need to go to acting school to learn that the essence of acting is to act like you're not acting.

Who do you think, as you gaze at the entire scene in Washington, who is it that's acting like a bunch of children? It isn't Trump. Who is it throwing the tantrums because they didn't get their way? Who is it acting like hysterical spoiled brats because their side lost the game? Who is it that's insisting, because they lost the game, that the rules be changed? Who is it that's acting like any average eight- to nine-year-old kid who's told he can't have any more Twinkies or whatever kids - marijuana; I don't know.

I've always played music and I've always been in bands and there have been periods in my life where the music has taken a much more front row seat than any acting. For a big period of time the acting work was really a way of raising money to fund my music. And then that all sort of changed around and that's fine.

I'm really interested in the minutiae of different tones and what that explains - how people's backgrounds are reflected in minute details of how they interact. It's true that I'm hypersensitive to all that. Writing is acting in the sense that you're imagining and inhabiting another. In the book I was trying to get at the root of what true acting is.

I think my parents were happy that I'd gone to university and gotten a degree in history so they thought, 'Well if acting doesn't work for him, he can always become a history teacher or something.' Fortunately, the acting worked out.

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.

For me, acting was always a way to explore emotions - to dip into the well and really try to reach rock bottom down there. That was the most exciting part of it. I hadn't found anything that really allowed me to do that until I came upon acting.

I love acting. I can't imagine anything else that I would do. I know a lot of actors that really want to be directors and be musicians and all that stuff. I like acting and I feel like I'm good at it. It kinda makes me happy. It's actually pretty easy to me and I can't imagine doing anything else at this point because I've been doing it for so long.

I enjoy them both [singing and acting] a great deal. I have a passion for both. Maybe acting just a little bit more because it's more of a challenge for me, while music comes so easily.

I 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.

Every director should take an acting class. At least one. You know, you panic with actors. It's like, "Okay, this is back in college, I know how to talk to these guys. I know their vocabulary, and I get what they're saying back to me." So basically to learn the vernacular of acting, that's very important.

With 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.

Working with children is very different than the way in which I work with adults. I never tell the children the actual truth of the thing that I want them to act. Although children are really into play and play acting, and this is a major part of their existence, they never actually find the playing or acting of adults credible.

It's much harder to act in a bad film than in a good one. A terrible script makes for very difficult acting. You can win an Academy Award for some of the easiest acting in your career, made possible by a brilliant script.

You know, you're just sitting with him [Chevy Chase], then you're doing a scene with him and acting, and all of a sudden you go, "Omigod, that's Chevy Chase!" And then you've got to keep acting. "Danny, your lines? Your lines...? You've got to keep going!" "Oh, sorry, sorry!"

The Marine Corps is some of the best acting training you could have. Having that responsibility for people's lives, suddenly time becomes a really valuable commodity and you want to make the most of it. And for acting, you just have to do the work, just keep doing it.

Hollywood is fickle; your career can end pretty fast. If the acting jobs dry up, you have to have something to fall back on. In fact, that would be my advice to kids interested in acting - make sure you get an education too.

Acting is something I appreciate, and I think it's been an amazing experience. But I'm not passionate about acting the way you probably should be to call yourself an actor.

Acting 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.

I always tell people that, if you feel like you're portraying a character really well, you're not acting. If you can reach that point where you don't feel like you're acting, than you're doing your job and the audience will believe you.

I'm a geeky actor, in the way that I like the craft of acting. I trained as a stage actor and was given a lot of technical tools to play with. I like the craft of acting. It sounds geeky when I say it, but it's true.

I like acting and things when I like the writing. If I don't like the writing, I don't like acting. I think in some ways everything starts for me from the place of writing.

I've been acting all along. I understand that I haven't been in people's viewers, but acting has never not been a part of my life, just more time in between and less high-profile.

I love doing action scenes, there's that great thing when you sort of stop acting because if you're running, you're not acting like you're running, you are just actually running.

For me, acting is like a therapy. I can express myself fully when I am acting and have blood in my veins. Even when I'm not working, I'm always living in my own world, imagining characters.

I don't think acting is addictive. If I stopped acting tomorrow, I really wouldn't care. If you told me that I would have to sell real estate in New York City to look after my family, that would be fine with me.

I had a great acting teacher in high school. But I didnt like acting because it took too many people to get the job done. You have to talk to too many people and listen to others opinions. With music, you get a few friends together and just make it.

Directing takes a lot longer than acting. This was about seven years in development, and then two and a half years with pre-production, production, post and now the release. Not that I have people banging on my door to star in movies, but it takes me out of the acting game for a longer chunk of time.

As a kid, I was into music, played guitar in a band. Then I started acting in plays in junior high school and just got lost in the puzzle of acting, the magic of it. I think it was an escape for me.

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 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.

There's an economy in sports that I always think is a useful metaphor for acting. You have an objective. You're trying to win, and of course, you want to do well. You want to use good techniques so you enforce it, but also you don't do things you don't have to do. It's very economical, and I think that in acting the most economical way through a scene is always the best. It's active. There is the sense of the fight and you want to win.

Acting is ephemeral. You can't hang it on a wall. You can't throw it off. And you can't bring it out of a closet. It's there one night and it's gone the next, at least with stage acting anyhow.

What I really like is the marriage of both [writing and acting] - for instance, with Postcards. I don't actually act in it, but I worked on it with Mike [Nichols] as I went along, creating the character, so it was a bit like acting for me.

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.

Lee Strasberg told me I had talent. Real talent. It was the first time that anyone, except my father--who had to say so--told me I was good. At anything. It was a turning point in my life. I went to bed thinking about acting. I woke up thinking about acting. It was like the roof had come off my life!

When I'm acting, I'm in a different place, singing is the last thing on my mind, and when I'm on stage, there's no acting at all involved, not even presentation, it's just who I am.

I 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.

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.

Actually ninety-nine percent of my acting has nothing to do sci-fi or fantasy, I consider it a good part of my acting, and enjoy the roles I play.

I was planning to go into architecture. But when I arrived, architecture was filled up. Acting was right next to it, so I signed up for acting instead.

A lot of people don't realize, when you are acting in a martial arts film, you're not just performing martial arts. You're not just performing martial arts. You're actually acting as much as any other actor.