Quotes About Actor

You can say something that can really help and actor and you can say something that can really get in the way of an actor's performance, kind of cut them off from their instincts and really get into their heads. And every actor's different. Every actor requires something different. Being an actor, for me, was the greatest training to be a writer and director.

Every director is always directing around the play. If you have an actor who really doesn't get the character well enough, you have to direct the play around that character. You have to make choices with that actor. If you have an actor that really doesn't get the role and has certain visions of the role, sometimes you have to direct around that actor.

My dad had been an actor... not only had my dad been an actor, but his dad had been an actor, and my great-grandfather had been an actor. And who knows before then?

I think, when someone say, "When did you feel like an actor?" it's those moments when I feel like, "I'm an actor, wow." That's an extraordinary moment for me. So it's not like I walk around going, "I'm an actor."

I think as an actor, you're more like a dancer, and you have to use your body. I don't understand all these questions about nudity. It's a nonsense. He's an actor, an artist, so get on with it.

I'm a character actor, so as a character actor, I'm always looking for something interesting.

As an actor, you generally want to see the other actor's face.

I 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.

Once 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.

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.

Certainly what constitutes a stage actor, what constitutes a film actor, I don't even know what that is. And both things are very accurate, in a sense. In terms of people's needs to concentrate on race, I wonder if it's completely necessary, but it's not something that is so dynamically relevant to me that I feel it should be one thing or another.

I'm not a method actor, but I'm a big research kind of actor.

My family was always very supportive. Whether you're an actor or not, everybody hears the horror stories of people going to L.A. and trying to be an actor, and their dreams are crushed, and they end up working for the IRS. So they were always protective to the point that they wanted me to have a backup plan, which is understandable, but there was always something inside of me that knew: backup plan, schmackup plan.

Before I was an actor, I was never able to hold a job for more than 3 months for some reason. It just wouldn't hold my interest, so there was some way that I wound up quitting or getting fired from it. But being an actor is perfect, because movies usually take about three months to shoot. Then it's over and they say, 'Hey, great job!'

To me, the responsibility of an actor is to recreate humanity honestly. I never feel like an actor, I always look at it from a blue collar perspective.

I 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.

I got out of college and I went to get my master's in creative writing at San Francisco State. I was working as an actor at the Actor's Workshop, being abused as a intern.

There should always be that leeway because if you think of your character as sort of absolutely fixed, then you just try and find actors to come and do exactly that thing, then you're not gonna be working with that actor's own set of internal impulses and who they are, so the best work is always a coming together of the actor and the character.

I'm a people's actor, not a critics' actor, and I always have been.

In my career, I've had kind of a strange trajectory as an actor. I started out doing movies and theater and stuff, but then I had a terrible problem with stage fright as an actor on stage, and I quit stage acting for a long, long time.

What I had found after the success of Karate Kid II is that an actor basically needs to - a primary requirement on my part as how I view as actor is you have to create a background, you have to create a history of that character and place her into the script that you're reading and carry on forward because you don't know how the future unfolds. This is what storytelling is you place a certain set of circumstances with a certain set of characters and you see what unfolds after an event happens.

I have actor friends, but they're not famous. I feel like if you're an actor or - famous, you have to overly prove that you're a normal, cool person.

I've always considered myself an actor, but I wasn't making a living as an actor.

Kids kill a show! It's, like, a fun concept when the character is pregnant, but then if a show runs for a while, I'm sorry, but it gets annoying when it starts to talk. You get a child actor in there, and unless that child actor is freakin' awesome, it's going to be annoying.

I think directors can be a little insensitive to how vulnerable an actor is, when he's giving a performance. Part of the job of an actor is to invite scrutiny, but with that, the people around them have to nurture that and put them in an environment where they feel safe and they feel like they can risk something.

The difference between being an actor and a director is simple. The director has to hide his panic; the actor doesn't.

The hardest thing in acting is going from child actor to adult actor. It's taken me a long time.

Los 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?

The theatre has built a whole art round the actor, based on the man and his double - the actor and his character.

The acting I got into by doing what we call pantomime, when I was sixteen. And, there were loads of very pretty girls in the show. I realized; I found out very early on, that the lead comic gets the girl. So, that was cool. When I went to university, I studied Economic Social History. And drama. That kind of got me into it. My main passion was to make films. It was never to be an actor. At that time, there weren't many opportunities for a working class Scottish actor. It was kind of an English thing. And it required a certain mannered cerebral acting style that I couldn't relate to.

You can always tell when an actor has grown a 'rhino skin' to protect themselves. It comes across on screen, and they aren't believable. They're dead in the eyes because they've been told a million times that they're the greatest actor that ever lived. If you don't realise what's happening, and get your feet back on the ground, it can be the worst thing that ever happens to you.

I just don't think that I could be the kind of actor I want to be and not be honest with myself. Honesty is very important to me as an actor and as a person. I didn't even think about it.

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.

My dream was I was going to be an actor. Racism occurred to me. It dawned on me that I would not be an actor. It occurred to me that I was not white. It occurred to me that being what they call colored, being a Negro, was some kind of a disadvantage.

If I'd made it right away as an actor, I would've stopped at a certain level and stayed there, probably as a character actor.

I started off as an actor thinking that I would be this Romeo, this dashing leading man. It turns out that I'm a character actor.

You have to get through the Hamlet hoop as a young actor. Your classical qualifications are based on the quality of your Hamlet. And then, as an older actor, you have to get through the Lear hoop. And I'm approaching the Lear hoop.

I think the first British actor who really worked well in cinema was Albert Finney. He was a back-street Marlon Brando. He brought a great wittiness and power to the screen. The best actor we've had.

I didn't come to Hollywood to drink or get high, and I don't want to be considered a cool actor - I want to be a great actor.

I put Liam at the top of the list, the male actor list, because I had just seen Schindler's List again and Michael Collins, and I was just like, 'God, what an incredible actor.'

I'm not an actor. I can show up for friends and improvise a little bit, but I'm not an actor.

I was born an ordinary actor. I will die an ordinary actor. But I've persisted.

I'm foremost an actor. I feel embarrassed being compared to the guys who really work at it. I fake it, I make believe I know all about it, which is what you're supposed to do as an actor.

I'm going to be a better actor, or I'm going to try to be a better actor. I'm going to try to be a better musician. I'm going to be an artist instead of just this one thing.

If you really want to become an actor, but only providing that acting doesn't interfere with your golf game, political ambitions and your life, you don't want to become an actor. Not only is acting more than a part time job, it's more than a full time job. It's a full time obsession.

I think when you're a mom and an actor, it forces you to leave any actor neuroses behind and just concentrate on the work.

Well, I think probably when I first got in the business, I wasn't thinking of being strictly a character actor. But I knew I wanted to be a working actor, and as the years have gone on, I just naturally evolved into that. Because, y'know, I'm not a leading guy. Never was.

I am not a star. I am an actor. I have been fighting for years to make people forget that I am just a pretty boy with a beautiful face. It's a hard fight, but I will win it. I want the public to realize that above all I am an actor, a very professional one who loves every minute of being in front of the camera. But one who becomes very miserable the instant the director shouts, 'Cut!'