Quotes About Actor

I definitely consider myself a Method actor, because of my training. I might dispute what people consider a Method actor to be. For my money, a Method actor is an actor who has a technique. That has a method. And not one method, but whatever might be required. So a Method actor is always learning.

I wouldn't be an actor if it weren't for the English teacher I had my junior year in high school. She's the one who told me I could be an actor. I had never met an actor, I had never seen a real play, only high school plays. I didn't know actors were real, that it was a real job.

To grasp the full significance of life is the actor's duty; to interpret it his problem; and to express it his dedication. Being an actor is the loneliest thing in the world. You are all alone with your concentration and imagination, and that's all you have. Being a good actor isn't easy. Being a man is even harder. I want to be both before I'm done.

As an actor, I don't really think you find yourself. I mean, once you find yourself, I think it becomes boring and you become set in your ways. I think, as an actor I think it's not a bad thing but more of a gift. It's something you're always doing as an actor. You're adjusting constantly.

People call me a theater actor, but I'm just an actor. But I tell my friends all the time - especially a lot that do theater and haven't done a lot of TV/film - that you have so much more control over your work onstage. When you go onstage, you can really see the difference between people who can really do it, and people who are just kind of pretending to do it. There is no editor, there's nothing that's going to stop the actor from showing what they can do unless it's not a well-written role.

When an actor plays a scene exactly the way a director orders, it isn't acting. It's following instructions. Anyone with the physical qualifications can do that. So the director's task is just that – to direct, to point the way. Then the actor takes over. And he must be allowed the space, the freedom to express himself in the role. Without that space, an actor is no more than an unthinking robot with a chest-full of push-buttons.

Sometimes perception is almost more important than the skill level of an actor. And if you give too much away, you have nothing to take for yourself and put onscreen. If people feel like they know you too well, they won't be able to indentify with the character you're trying to portray. Or they'll feel that you're just playing yourself, and then you just become a personality actor. And that's the death of any actor.

I had to go in and do the work of toning [invented "historical" bits] down in order to make them fit [in Lincoln in the Bardo]. It's like if you're an actor and you're always overacting, well, you're a bad actor. But if you're an actor who subdues yourself to the extent that's necessary, then you're really acting.

I think my family's watched me over the years in my career, in my pursuit of my career, and they've seen the challenges and the struggles that come with being an actor, with being a writer and a director, and the challenges of morphing my career in from just being an actor into a writer/director.

A Guide To Recognizing Your Saints' was the first real actor-actor part I did, and I hope I to do more. Action movies are fun, but I'd be happy not to do them if there are better roles.

I just enjoy the filmmaking side of things. I feel like when you're an actor, sometimes you're in other people's hands and they're in charge of your creative life. Whereas with my production company, I'm the one that gets to make those choices for how I'm gonna spend my time and what content I'm going to be creating. I definitely learn a lot, especially about acting, by producing and directing and seeing how it all comes together, and seeing the other side of things, appreciating what goes into pre- and post-production, and all those things you don't see when you're an actor.

When someone's an actor and you're an actor, you meet them and you feel like you know them. We're in the same business, and we all speak the same comedy language.

I think directing yourself is a monumental task. Just to self edit as an actor, you work for some directors who don't give you a lot of feedback so you have to do that. That's a difficult thing to do as an actor.

I just realized that I need to be a director - for two reasons. One, directors were already my heroes at this point. I wanted to; when I wanted to be an actor I wanted to work with this director. Not work with this actor, I wanted to work for this director.

I'm a comedic actor, not to mix words, but it's something I think about. A comedic actor. I like to think that Christopher Guest, Phil Hartman, Peter Sellers and Alec Guinness are comedic actors. And Dan Aykroyd, too. Those are my heroes.

I do think it's a very good way to describe what a great actor does. You're both acknowledging the authority of the director and the necessity of the actor to push back and find their own voice.

First of all, it was wonderful to have a home. Consistent work when you're a journeyman actor, when you're a character actor, is really hard to come by. When you can get it, you have to cherish every moment of it - cherish the crew, cherish the cast, cherish the stage, cherish everything. Because when it's over, it's really hard to get back.

Filming in Cloak & Dagger I was trying to get my Screen Actors Guild card. Everybody tries to get their SAG card if they want to be an actor. People might say that it was their dream to be an actor, but for me, I was a comedian. I already had a job. But I felt like there could be money there, and comedians don't make very much money, or they didn't in 1984.

I was an actor as a kid in Boston. Then I went to art school with Brice Marden, the Massachusetts College of Art. So the hybrid of being an actor and artist is a director.

Acting, music, painting... it's very subjective. So what I might think is a great actor, you might think is not a very good actor at all.

I moved in with my grandma when I was 17 and she had this giant bookshelf and it was fascinating to me. She got me into reading. My grandma is part of the writing community. She's so cute - I went to get breakfast with her out in L.A. and she came in with a giant straw hat and orange jumpsuit. She was always a big inspiration in me in continuing in the arts, whether it was acting or I started to paint. I didn't want to be one of those people that was like, "Oh my dad's an actor, so I'm an actor." It just never works out.

The way an actor is trained doesn't ultimately have much bearing on my work. I'm interested in the actor as artist.

The delineation between the actor and his part is a practical matter. When the camera runs, you want the actor to be the character.

I've been nominated twice before as actor in a leading part. Now I'm nominated as actor in a supporting part. If I don't win, I'll just wait until I'm nominated for being in the theater during the show. Do they have one like that?

Interest in religion is not necessarily interest in God. Religion in public life means a set of ideas, an ideology that has certain positions. Religion is then one more ideology among others. Religion is about God. Religion begins with a relationship to God, not a relationship to an idea. It is God who is an actor, not just individuals who have certain beliefs who are actors. God is an actor.

Sometimes you'll see interviews about an actor who was asked to hit the weight room to develop his body for the character, and you hear them complaining about the egg white omelettes they had to eat and the tortures of hitting the gym twice a day - I find that to be a bit saddening, it's all a part of becoming the character and as an actor, that is your job.

It's the same with people knowing absolutely everything there is to know about an actor. I actually think the more personal information you have about an actor, the more you have to carve out for yourself when you go to a movie and see them in it

I think every leading man wants to be a character actor, and every character actor wants to be a leading man.

I know what a good question would be for an actor. What's your least favorite thing that you've ever heard an actor say about acting? Or about being in a movie?

People say to me, 'Oh, being a mother must make you a better actor,' and I think, 'Well, I never sleep, I have very little time to think about anything except when I'm actually there.' I wonder whether that makes me a better actor. I think it must on some level.

It is one of the few elements in the process that a director really, really can't control: an actor's performance. If you have a director that understands that, it's comforting to an actor. You're starting the relationship more as a collaborator, rather than as an employee or some kind of a soldier trying to execute something you don't organically feel.

If a good actor wants a role, they'll do whatever it takes to get the part. Directors are the same. We do 'meetings', not auditions: that tells you a whole lot more about an actor, too.

It's the persona that makes you a leading actor. A leading actor has something extra that's fun to watch. But it isn't usually about acting.

I knew I wanted to be an actor when I was growing up, really. So when I decided to go to university instead of drama school, it was with the intention of becoming an actor afterwards.

Peter Sarsgaard, he's an extraordinary actor, and I would say that Peter has really brought into my life and my sister's life a sense of presence as an actor that I never really understood or knew about until I met him. They've been together for a very long time, and he introduced me to the idea of the presentation.

You know, the hard thing about audiences not liking what a character does is that they sometimes take it out on the actor personally. That's something that you know when you become an actor or actress, but it's always hard to deal with when it actually happens.

I feel like I'm more of a physical actor than a voice actor.

There's one thing better than having a great actor, and that's having a great actor who's never done this kind of role before and is hungry to do it. They're testing themselves every day. They want to get out of their trailer and get to work.

The thing is that I'm an actor first, and in 'Once,' I was able to be a musician and a singer as well as an actor.

This new economy that's just emerged has a new central economic actor. It's not the worker, the person who produces, nor the person who consumes, the purchaser. It's a new actor that does both things at the same time, call them a creator. They both create and consume in the same single act, and we're just beginning to see the shape of this new economy and it changes not just the economy itself, it's going to change the whole nature of the work relationship.

I think by default I wanted to be an actor because, on a movie set as a little kid, the only thing that you can do is be an actor. And I was really enthralled by the whole process.

I feel like being an actor it is a great way to do your job and be a parent, because you have a lot of freedom. You have a job and then the job ends and than maybe you don't have another job for a while or maybe you chose not have another job for a while. For an actor, it's like maybe you don't see your kid for two weeks while you are filming but then you might have three months off where you are at home every day and picking him up from school. I find it's a great thing.

A director once said, when I was complaining about something or other, "I agree, it is terrible. The worst thing you can do to an actor is give him a job." That shut me up and broke off a big hunk of my actor's cynical armor.

I realized that being an actor was something I never owned up to, in a weird way. I would be a hostess or a waitress or a house restorer before I would consider myself an actor, because I never thought I was good enough.

As a director, I wouldn't like me as an actor. As an actor, I wouldn't like me as a director.

A lot of people are surprised to hear that an actor studied for two or three years. They take the craft for granted and wanna just wake up and be an actor.

I don't think an actor's job is to be recognized. I think an actor's job is to facilitate the writing in a way that changes the way people think. No other business does that.

Taxi Driver' is a movie that changed my life and made me a serious actor. Scorsese and De Niro. I give credit for anything that I've ever done as an actor.