Quotes About Acting

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?

The difference - the fundamental difference between theater acting and film acting is that film acting is disjunctive.

It's fine to have talent, but talent is the last of it. In an acting career, as in an acting performance, you've got to have vitality. The secret of successful acting is identical with a woman's beauty secret: joy in living.

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.

Acting became important. It became an art that belonged to the actor, not to the director or producer, or the man whose money had bought the studio. It was an art that transformed you into somebody else, that increased your life and mind. I had always loved acting and tried hard to learn it. But with Michael Chekhov, acting became more than a profession to me. It became a sort of religion.

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.

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.

Acting is the only thing I'm even vaguely good at and acting is something that I think I do know about.

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've told Kamal Haasan, Amitabh Bachchan, Naseeruddin Shah, Nana Patekar, I just want to touch you. They are the gods of acting. When people call me God, I say, no, I'm still an angel or saint of acting. I still have a long way to go.

People say, "Why is it that you love to act?" And you want to say, "Well, most of acting is sitting in your trailer, either bored or worried about the scene coming up." A lot of it is about things you don't really like, so it's a wonder why acting is such a huge draw, why everyone loves it so much.

I think I'm a better actor now. I mean, I really think I know a lot about acting now. But I didn't know a lot about acting then, in 80's, and I never knew how to be myself. I never knew how to relax and just play it from me. I was always trying to deliver a line.

I believe you have to start with a craft; you don't just start with a dream. You've got to put a lot of work in. If you want to pursue acting, then you go to acting class. If you want to be a dancer, then you learn to dance, which is what I did.

What I do is I don't act a part, I give a piece of myself. Old friends that have known me for a long time, when they saw me in my first movie said: "Roland you are not acting; you are just being yourself." But I don't think you can deliver a role without putting something of yourself into it, and I just realised that everyday we do a little bit of acting.

The thing is, if I try to talk about acting, I come off as moaning. But I'm privileged. I think it's all about control. Acting is vulnerable because you're not in control of anything. You have to give up a lot of your trust; it's up to somebody else what they do with what you've given them.

Acting for me was an escape and it wasn't until Smoke Signals that made me realize that acting is a personal development and challenge to grow. Smoke Signals really mirrored the way I grew up and how I felt, and that movie was the first time I'd dealt with my parents' death and how I felt that loss and sadness and anger. After that movie I said, "Y'know what, I have to realistically wear my emotions now when I do a job. That's gotta be as real as it gets. It's not just dialogue anymore."

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 came from the stage so it was a different kind of acting, or a different arena of acting, and I just loved to do it as a kid. It's really gratifying to get to create these different characters and to get to create different voices and to get to wear different clothes.

I started acting when I was about nine. I always wanted to get into acting since I was really little but my parents would never let me because they'd heard all the bad stuff about being in the business as a young actor and stuff like that.

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

I would love to do more acting; I really would love to do it, particularly character acting. I'm a character type of actor; I love situations where I've got a bit of room to improvise on the character.

I'm glad I took the leap away from acting into going behind the camera because it's much more satisfying - I love acting and I still do, but it's much more satisfying to be able to make the stuff.

(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.

[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.

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 consider theater, this is a vacation for me from LA, I sort of view this as I get to have this vacation and during my vacation I get to work on acting. It's like an acting class. And if I go too long without doing a play, I just feel empty. Like approaching a role, I feel like the pool is very shallow, like I'm drawn from it. So I need to come back and do a play, fortunately I've been able to, every couple of years.

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.

We urge persons with same-gender attractions to control those and to refrain from acting upon them, which is a sin, just as we urge persons with heterosexual attractions to refrain from acting upon them until they have the opportunity for a marriage recognized by God as well as by the law of the land. That is the way to happiness and eternal life.

It took a while to find a passion for another career that was as strong as the passion that I had for football. Once I found it in acting, it was simple. Use the tools you were given from playing football and apply it to your new passion. I have done that through acting, producing and writing.

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'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.

Acting is not a lofty performance; it is simply the source of becoming and existing transparently. Acting, I find, is the art of frothing to the surface every raw and honest emotion. The moment an actor pretends, he loses his audience forever

I know that if I'd had to go and take an exam for acting, I wouldn't have got anywhere. You don't take exams for acting, you take your courage.

I don't know what acting is, but I enjoy it. I think we ask too many questions of ourselves. We make too much importance of stuff. But I do say to actors when I have taught in classes, or when I sometimes do a talk to a group. I'll say, “If I never acted again, the world wouldn't stop, nor would it stop if I didn't stop acting. That's how important it is. I know it [seems] important when you're young. But I say, “Lighten up. Don't take it all so seriously.” All the gurus and teachers will take your money and run.

I read all the books on Fairfax in the British Library, did a lot of horse riding and studied military tactics of the time, finding out that he actually laid his rose garden out in strategic formations! But Method acting is a label I don't really understand, because there's a method to everybody's acting. In terms of jumping into a character's skin, I try to immerse myself in the role as much as possible to bring me closer to them. All I do is what's required to achieve what I want to achieve.

I started acting long before I decided to pursue it. I started acting as an amateur when I was a kid, but I wanted to become a diplomat. It was self-centered and weird, but I had this idea of going out in the world and solving conflicts and making the world a better place.

I have done some formal acting training, because I sucked at acting when I first got to Los Angeles. I'm still one of the worst actors and auditions out there.

The hardest part of acting is not when I'm acting, It's when I'm not.

When it comes to acting on green screen, it doesn't really make all that much of a difference to me because how you interact with your environment or characters is always dictated by your imagination. So when you're acting against a green screen, you have more of an opportunity to create your own world. So what was magical throughout this process was watching this movie come to life with the 3D.

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

As an actor, it made me realize a really important lesson. I didn't have to put any spin on the ball as Rita [in Dexter]. All I had to do was speak. And there was such simplicity in that as an actor. With Debra, I was trying to put a square peg into a round hole, and it just didn't work, but in my mind, because I had to work so hard on it, I was, like, "Oh, this is acting!" But that's not acting.

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.

When you're young, you get by on charm and good looks, not that I miss being charming or good-looking, but then you start to understand things about life, about the craft of acting. You approach it a different way. It's much more fun now than it was, because you take more chances and risks. I enjoy acting now more than when I was young.

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.

The 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.

Acting is everything to me and it's at the core of every decision. Whatever importance costumes, details, lights, camera, dialogue and everything else have, if the acting is bad, cheap, or overdone everything else is just gone.

I drifted into acting and drifted out. Acting is not everything. Living is.

In my acting class there was this acting exercise going on, and I remember asking a buddy, "Do you ever do this at your apartment when no one's home? Do you ever act out these hypothetical moments?" And he goes, "No, Lizzie, because that's called crazy." Whatever, I was 20 and doing it so who cares.