Popular quotes about Actor! Wisdom and inspiration are here!
Truthfully, most directors don't direct actors. Every actor is different, so when you're asked, "How do you approach an actor?," it depends on the actor. With some, you do nothing. With some, you're very specific.
John LandisPeople 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.
Viola DavisAs an actor - and I say actor, but actress or actor, whatever - I've had to learn to be very open about what I want. I ask for it, even if I may not get it. I feel like it's worth the ask.
Anna GunnI don't think that many people today, understand the nature of what an improv does for an actor in a specific setting. What an improv does for an actor is help him find the life; it's the life that an actor's after.
Giovanni RibisiWerner Herzog, I knew him for so many years, when Fassbinder was at his highest moment. But we had a rule: An actor from Fassbinder could never work with an actor of Werner Herzog or Wim Wenders. Because if we would have done that, we would have been spies. "Ah, you worked with Werner - how was it? How did he direct you?" I was Fassbinder's actor.
Udo KierThe great exception to that, of course, is Johnny Depp, who is absolutely the ultimate character actor. Johnny Depp is the future of the character actor and thanks to his success maybe we will see the return of an era when my sort of actor is back in vogue. It's not in vogue for me to be in Hollywood movies as lots of different people.
David SuchetThe actor's physical type is the main consideration. It isn't and shouldn't be. Does the actor "look the part"? It is the simplest question to deal with. The director deludes himself who yields to the temptation to believe that an affirmative answer settles the matter. An actor's looks will impress an audience initially but after his first five minutes on stage it becomes aware of what he or she communicates (or fails to communicate) through acting!
Harold ClurmanI'm frequently surprised, sometimes bugged off, and sometimes happy, depending on the actor. It's a fact of life that just as often as not an actor can breathe life into a line as he can destroy it by misinterpretation, and I've been blessed frequently by having good actors.
Rod SerlingI 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.
Ricky SchroderI love my job, I love being an actor and stepping into the shoes of different characters and exploring their lives. It's enriched my life extremely. I've learned more about myself and the ways of life through being an actor.
Hilary SwankOnce you've gotten the job, there's nothing to it. If you're an actor, you're an actor. Doing it is not the hard part. The hard part is getting to do it.
Morgan FreemanMy dad was an actor, and my older sister is an actress, and so I very much remember thinking, "Well, of course I'll do that as well." But I never imagined myself as an actor who would be in films. I always only thought of myself being in a play or a musical and maybe the odd episode of [U.K. '80s TV drama] Casualty. My backup plan was to do something with children, to start a nursery school or work with underprivileged kids. And I still dream of maybe doing that in some way. I've always got children in my house, always.
Kate WinsletIn a personal way, to do with family and the father-son relationship, in a kind of artistic way with regard to him being an art student. I also studied the visual arts at Lancaster University. I then decided to become an actor as he was becoming a musician. And then as an actor/performer, we have similar sort of interests - music hall and that whole world. So, there's a lot that I felt connected with.
Andy SerkisVery often the Group actor is a critic when he's acting and an actor when he's criticizing.
Elia KazanWhen I was 18 and not sure whether I wanted to be an actor, I realised that a playwright has no voice without an actor. That's my reason for acting: to get that character as right as possible for my writer. And I have never changed my philosophy.
David SuchetI don't speak out because I am an actor nor will I keep silent because I am an actor. I respect my profession, but it endows me with no special privileges; but it also does not limit me or muzzle me. I am a person and a citizen with the attendant responsibilities of voice and vote.
Theodore BikelYou know obviously a big TV or film break would be lovely, but I find that Iโm essentially a theatre trained actor and thatโs what I love doing. I love fringe theatres in London, I love theatres like the Royal Court, Soho and the National obviously and if I could work in any of those and be a jobbing actor for a while then Iโm very lucky.
Kit HaringtonEvery film for every actor is a make-or-break film. I believe every film has the power to break you or make you. So, an actor will treat every film like his last film. That's the way we need to work, and that's the way you can drum up that passion needed to do good work.
Abhishek BachchanThere is a bit of a once a soap actor always a soap actor thing, but I do think people still recognise talent. If youre good at something, then people have no choice but to accept it.
Judi ShekoniI think one of the main differences between being an English actor and being an American actor is that we have things like the class system in England.I'm middle class. But I've got what some people might consider to be a working-class accent, so you've got those sorts of elements in this country to consider, which, in America, exist, but not necessarily in the same way.
Rafe SpallMy experience as a young actor on network television was that I couldn't make it work. I was drowning as an actor.
James Badge DaleTV acting is so extremely intimate, because of the peculiar involvement of the viewer with the completion or "closing" of the TV image, that the actor must achieve a great degree of spontaneous casualness that would be irrelevant in movie and lost on the stage. For the audience participates in the inner life of the TV actor as fully as in the outer life of the movie star. Technically, TV tends to be a close-up medium. The close-up that in the movie is used for shock is, on TV, a quite casual thing.
Marshall McLuhanThe delineation between the actor and his part is a practical matter. When the camera runs, you want the actor to be the character.
Mike LeighSome people manage to make that transition from child actor to adult actor seamlessly. But I felt that if I spent my whole life on a film set without taking a few years to do something else, all I would ever know about was film sets.
Anna PopplewellIt'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
Holly HunterI always wanted to be a journeyman actor. I wanted to be able to do comedy and drama, classical and contemporary. I like to do film and theater. And I pride myself on that diversity of being a journeyman actor.
Wendell PierceI did a couple comedies to balance myself as an actor and balance how audiences see Donnie Yen as an actor, and I would even say as a celebrity or icon, to some fans. I want to show that I'm not Terminator.
Donnie YenAs an actor it's like, go with whatever excites you as an actor. What are you're going to invest yourself in as a character? What are you going to get into? Have a variety of characters to play.
Milo VentimigliaLos Angeles is where you have to be if you want to be an actor. You have no choice. You go there or New York. I flipped a coin about it. It came up New York, so I flipped again. When you're starting out to be an actor, who wants to go where it's cold and miserable and be poor there?
Harrison FordOne 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.
Michael EalyI've never really felt like I was a child actor. Just an actor who happened to be quite young.
Saoirse RonanI love working with the right actor, and if the right actor happens to be unknown, that should be allowed, too, I think.
J. J. AbramsBusiness is very personal. For me, everything is extremely personal. With actors, the fact that I write helps, because when you say to an actor "Oh I want you to do it a little bit more ...," without saying what you want more of, then the actor doesn't know what to do. But if you can put into words exactly what you want, then the experience of writing is helpful with that.
Marjane SatrapiI thought I was an actor playing a wizard. But really, I was a wizard playing an actor.
Daniel RadcliffeEven dramatically how you position some person, the depth, the existence [in 3D] is different than a flat image even though by itself it has depth, we create the illusion of depth. For example, some of the shots I have to stay closer to the actor because it's a young actor, I like it closer for some of the shots. I watch 2D scenes next to the camera, then when I go back to my station and watch it in 3D I have to go back and reduce his acting, he has to shrink a little bit because he peeks out more.
Ang LeeWe joke about it in the entertainment industry: Every actor wants to be a musician, and every musician wants to be an actor.
Lance BassI'm an actor and I love to find new collaborations and new characters where I can grow as an actor and human being.
Alexander SkarsgardIf you can't fail then how can you possible develop as a communicator or as a creator of anything? We are locked into a deeply unhealthy notion that somehow you've got to succeed all the time. An appalling notion. Any painter or writer will tell you that that is no way to proceed. One of the things that will kill off a decent actor, especially a young actor early on and they will never recover from it, is too much success. It's disastrous. You stop being criticized, therefore you stop challenging yourself. You then can't afford to fail because there's too far to fall.
Emma ThompsonDanny DeVito knows about the business from many different perspectives, because he is a producer and director as well as an actor. At one point we were on the set late at night and he said: 'come here I want to brush your hair'. I said 'ok'. He sat there brushing my hair and told me that his job before becoming an actor was as a hair stylist in Manhattan. I said "what?" But it is true.
Kristin DavisI'm not sure I enjoyed doing [Gigi Does It]. I'm cool with just being an actor. If anything, I learned to be proud of being an actor.
David KrumholtzI never wanted to be an actor. My dad was an actor, and he never brought joy home, so I didn't view it as something that I would want to do. But I got fired as a secretary, and then I started studying, I started doing it just to earn money. And it took me a long time to learn to love it. And what I loved was telling a story. I tried to avoid making plays or films that weren't telling a story that I felt was important. I discovered in the process that it makes you more empathic because you have to enter someone else's reality and learn to see through many other people's eyes.
Jane Fonda