Quotes About Acting

I try to think of acting in terms of thinking and doing. People think of it as, "Oh, let's get inside this guy." They think that acting is being, or feeling, or emoting. It's as much doing. One of the first things you do as an acting student is ask, "Can you say words and do a task at the same time, like sweep a floor?" You get to watch the human condition, and there's always a "doing" aspect of it. This couple, they're carrying backpacks, where are they going? Students? Or are they carrying instruments? It stimulates the imagination. So acting is doing ... and I forget how we got off on that.

This city can be kind of brutal, so you see your dreams from every different angle, but ultimately it's about acting and if you enjoy acting, you will always enjoy acting.

I've been acting since I was ten years old. I had two lines in Snow White and the Seven Dwarves at the community theater I was very focused and I loved it. My parents believed in the arts and being well rounded. So I played piano and violin, I danced and acted. They never thought I would go into acting though. They just wanted a well-rounded child and it was a bit of a shock to my dad when I said "I want to go to acting school" because he is a psychology professor and was thinking of something more academic.

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.

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 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.

I wanted to be a jazz pianist, but I wasn't good enough. I got into city college because I didn't have the grades to get into university. I took acting because it was a way to get three credits. I just needed three credits and my friend told me to take acting because it was like gym - nobody fails you. I took it and that's literally how I got involved in acting.

People talk about the difference between radio acting, TV acting and stage acting, but I think it's all the same. For instance, when I played Vultan in 'Flash Gordon,' I put as much energy into it as I would with 'King Lear' - it's all part of the same thing.

It all started in Michigan. My dad got a job in Michigan, so we all moved up there from St. Louis. I kind of hung out in the summer and had nothing to do, so I sort of got into acting. And then I was going to Grand Blanc High, doing the acting thing and hoping it would pan out.

Lots of things are hard work, but I think writing, for me, after I started acting at 13 years old. I like writing now much more than I do acting only because well, partly because the scripts that are offered are junk.

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.

When I was a kid, I wanted to be an actor. I was acting in all the school plays. I went to school for acting. I was really sure that that's what I wanted to do.

I want to break into the acting industry. It's something I have a great deal of respect for; it's a passion of mine. It's so amazing, the differences between acting and being an athlete, but the one commonality is they both evoke emotion in the viewer. And those emotions are real. So I think that's pretty cool.

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.

There is a lot of acting that is on the table - precisely, good acting. The best movies of mine are the ones that really nobody saw. The Groomsmen, Playing By Heart and Seeing Other People are by far the work I'm the most proud of.

You know, women are acting the way they want to act now. Years ago they would hide it in the way they dressed, the way they speak, even the way they act in bed. Today, they're doing the same thing, but they're dressing the way they want to be treated and, when you're with them, acting the way they want to act. And you know, honesty is the best policy. I love that.

comedy ... is much harder to do than drama. It's not true that laugh and the world laughs with you. It's very hard to make a group of people laugh at the same thing; much easier to make them cry at the same thing. ... That's why great comic acting is probably the greatest acting there is.

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.

Honestly, as hard a profession as acting is, I think music is even harder. Acting, you're like a leech, because someone else does the hard part for you. They write it for you, then the director tells you what to do. You really just need to know how to pay attention, follow instructions.

I studied acting for five years. I quit college at that point. You know, I go hard. When I know I'm supposed to go in a direction, I'm fully committed and I go all the way. Everything falls to the side and I'm all in. So I completely dove into acting even though I was almost 30.

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.

Taking a man's money without his consent, is also as much robbery, when it is done by millions of men, acting in concert, and calling themselves a government, as when it is done by a single individual, acting on his own responsibility, and calling himself a highwayman.

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!"

Film acting is really the trick of doing moments. You rarely do a take that lasts more than 20 seconds. You really earn your spurs acting onstage. I needed to do that for myself. I would hate to say at the end of everything that I never did a stage play.

I guess at a certain point you think, well, singing is singing and acting is acting.

Acting is acting, as far as I'm concerned and, you know, how you manifest it is, at the end of the day, not the point. It's how it affects the story & how it affects the audience. And if people are hungry to be told stories, using, using this form then there's a reason for that.

We learned out craft. Acting is a craft and you must learn it. I see a lot of talent today in the kids but they don't know how to work. They don't know the craft of acting and you can only get that on the stage in theater. You cannot learn how to act in movies or in television.

I really enjoyed being on movie sets, and I had fun with the people, but I didn't really think about acting or care, or I didn't think I cared about acting.

[President Bush] recently challenged Iraqi soldiers still fighting U.S. troops like so: ... 'My answer is bring 'em on.' For those of you who may be criticizing Bush for acting like a movie cowboy, let me remind you. He's actually acting more like a movie cheerleader.

We [musicians] are comfortable in front of the camera doing music videos, and it's almost a form of acting when we're doing music videos. We're acting out our own thoughts and what we've written down on paper.

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

For me, I've never drawn a distinction between live-action acting and performance-capture acting. It is purely a technology.

Any system which says, This is a rotten world, wait for the next, give up, do nothing, succumb--that may be the basic Lie and if we participate in believing it and acting (or rather not acting) on it we involve ourselves in the Lie and suffer dreadfully... which only reinforces that particular Lie.

Well, acting has been a dream of mine since I can remember; being in the movies and acting, having those experiences.

I'm now learning how to distinguish when I'm acting and when I'm not acting - offstage as well as onstage.

Most people assume because I'm an actor that's all I know about and care about, I'm actually a camera geek and a film geek. I grew up making short films the same time I was acting. For me, it's a motion picture, not a play. I'm just as interested in what the camera department is doing and world building through costume design and production design as I am in acting. I think all good directors do that whether they're an actor or not.

The art of managing and leading comes down to a simple thing. Determining and facing reality about people, situations, products, and then acting decisively and quickly on that reality. Think how many times we have procrastinated, hoped it would get better. Most of the mistakes you've made have been through not being willing to face into it, straight in the mirror that reality you find, then taking action on it. That's all managing is, defining and acting. Not hoping, not waiting fro the next plan. Not rethinking it. Getting on with it. Doing it. Defining and doing it.

It's just acting. I take acting seriously but up to a point.

Different scenes call for different acting styles. The kinds of scenes I like most are the ones where you just bury yourself in there. So I wouldn't say that's the only way to be funny, but that's my favorite way to play stuff, to try to put myself in a situation where that kind of acting is necessary.

There 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.

I think there's a real connection between acting and writing novels because the way I write characters has a little bit to do with the method acting that I was taught in high school and college.

Acting. Whenever I am playing a character, I use my real life experiences, which puts me on the line of reliving some of those good and bad times. Acting requires risk, and that's what feeling vulnerable is.

I could live without acting.... Acting is a gift I've received. And I'm grateful for it and I enjoy it. But it's not the main point of my life. It never was.

... social environment in childhood affects achieved adult height, life chances, and ultimately mortality rates in adult life. (...) ... social circumstances acting in childhood do have a persisting effect on adult disease rates, in addition to influences acting in adulthood.

The process of acting, not necessarily the business of acting, but the actual doing of it in the moment is my greatest kind of personal passion, the thing that brings me alive the most. Also, my two children.

Stylized acting and direction is to realistic acting and direction as poetry is to prose.

Of course, you can never watch something like somebody else watches something like you, but nonetheless, you have to try. So I think on camera you learn a lot about how much the camera does for you, which is what is the great luxury of movie acting. Or acting whether it's TV or movies or whatever it is, that the camera's really such a gift because there's so much that it sees and does if you're willing to just be open and expose yourself and all of that. So you also learn what doesn't matter. And sometimes when you think about things, you think things matter that don't matter.

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.