Quotes About Acting

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.

Dance was one of the things that led me to acting even though I say I fell in love with acting fairly early on and its true but around 16 and 17 I got heavily into dance but I think I just came into it too late and I was never going to be really great at it so I let it go and the dance led to more acting classes.

What I've discovered is, really, acting is acting is acting. It's all the same. Seventy-five percent of the skills are the same in both media.

I was applying to the art school, but there was a checklist that said I had to do either production design or stage management or acting. I thought, "I don't want to be an actor, but I know production and stage management take acting classes" - this is literally my internal monologue. I was like, "Designers don't have to take acting classes. Cool. I'll check that box".

I 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.

To be a leader in this new economy, you have to love risk-which means patterning your life on the heroic, not on the strategic. Acting boldly is better than acting knowingly.

I was new to acting on a stage in a narrative as opposed to acting on a stage as a stand-up. And like everything else it's just like comfort level. The first time I did stand-up I was at a place called the B3 in New York on Third and Avenue B and I not only didn't take the mic out of the stand, but I clutched the stand of the entire time.

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.

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.

Singing and acting are very similar. Singing makes you reach into your deepest feelings. Singing is an extension of everything that you do when you're acting.

I really just enjoy listening to talk [to John Hurt and Charlotte Rampling]... not even about acting or anything. It's interesting because I felt really connected to all these people very easily. They're all very open emotionally, like we're in the scene together, so you never feel like anyone's acting.

You know policy is driven purely in self interest. The Federal Reserve Bank and the commercial banks and the Wall Street banks are not acting in the interests of the population at large, they're acting purely in their own self-interest, which is a shame because they're actions dictate the reality for 300 million Americans. But they don't see it that way, they see it only as a way to preserve their own self-interest.

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.

I enrolled in an acting workshop and my first acting role was on the TV soap opera 'Melrose Place.'

I don't like acting and I never have liked acting and I never wanted to be an actress.

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.

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.

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.

I think the greatest gift actually acting is that I have a true fascination and love for people, and the way they are, and all the choices they made in life and all the different paths they took. I feel like acting gives me an opportunity to dig a little bit into that. That's great because it's eye-opening and it makes you an open person.

I don't have that drive to be in this field, climbing up, doing bit parts in movies to make a big movie. But I'm lucky I get to also do acting - it's fun. I should probably just take an acting class on the weekends - that would be enough for me.

When I was acting, as a hobby, I would devour popular science books and keep up-to-date about what was going on in the science community. And then, suddenly my hobby became my job. I didn't one day say, "I'm not acting. I'm now going to be a science person."

At the end of drama school, I made a contract with myself: I'd try acting for five years. I was 26. I had already spent eight years working in restaurants and gas stations. So I had seen enough small businesses to understand that that's what acting is: a small business.

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.

Lars is played by Ryan Gosling, the Prince of Tics, whose idea of acting is to wait a few beats before reacting to other people's remarks, as if acting were merely a matter of adhering to the seven-second delay rule. Jack Nicholson has made a career out of doing this sort of thing, as did Paul Newman, as did Marlon Brando (who the other two learned it from), but they didn't do it all the time and they were more fun to look at... Lars And The Real Girl joins a number of other recent films in the category of motion pictures where the director doesn't know that his protagonist is unsympathetic.

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.

I've always felt that acting is acting at the end of the day, so whether you're doing comedy or heavy drama or anything else in between, you always have to bring a semblance of honesty to it. It's all make believe.

When it comes to acting, it's about creating a character and bringing forth a director's vision. It's a weird feeling, because with acting, it's just not about me. I love being in that position, because with the music, it's always about me.

My advice has always been to study the craft of acting if you want to be an actor. There are many great schools that teach acting. NYU being one of them.

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.

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 was studying to be an architect, I wasn't plotting to join the movies. Films were just another career option. I took acting up with the same schoolgirl enthusiasm I had for examinations. Acting is a job and I take it very seriously.

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.

Ballet 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.

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.

I love playing half squid/half crab guy because you can get away with a level of acting that if you tried it anywhere else they'd arrest you for crimes against acting.

I have such a strong acting background because I know what I'm looking for, I know what the needs are, and I know acting when I see it.

There are places where writing is acting and acting is writing. I'm not so interested in the divisions. I'm interested in the way things cross over.

In L.A., I was meeting people who were all actors. My mind started to open up to what acting was. I didn't realize that Brad Pitt was a real person. I didn't think he was a robot or a machine, but I thought you were just born into acting - that it's a family tree, kind of like NASCAR. No one can just say, 'Hey, I'm going to be a NASCAR driver.'

I started acting in second grade - my first role was in the Thanksgiving play. I was the Indian chasing the turkey. All the other mom's encouraged my mom to get me into acting after that.

I love acting. But I love being a mother. To be a full mother and a full person, you have to do what you love, and that's acting. But I like the best of both worlds.

If I'm directing actors, I learn about acting that way. If I'm acting, I learn about directing that way. Producing is just something that's come about because there's projects I find interesting that I would like to help get done.

I have recently started acting lessons in south France, and I intend to commence acting lessons at Rada.

Making films has never just been a job to me, it is my life. I have some interests outside of acting - I sing and I've written books, for instance - but acting is what keeps me going, it's what I do, it gives life purpose.

Golf is like acting in that both require concentration and relaxation at the same time. In acting, you can't push emotion. You have to let it rise from you naturally. Same thing in golf. You have to have a plan and a focus; but then you need to just let it happen and enjoy the smooth movement of the swing.

Some people have therapy, some people are alcoholics or they're in AA. Some people jump out of planes on weekends or find ways to release this kind of thing. And for me, it's acting. I find acting very therapeutic for whatever it is.

The level of acting that I bring to films in three dimensions. I hope they make people sign some kind of waiver because if their mind explodes from my acting in 3D, it's not my fault.

We don't have sources who are dissidents on other sources. Should they come forward, that would be a tricky situation for us, but we're presumably acting in such a way that people feel morally compelled to continue our mission, not to screw it up.

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.