Quotes About Actor

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.

As 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.

[Ed Lauter] was an actor's actor. I love working with that class of actor. You know, they come in, they do it, no bullshit. There's no artifice, there's no fanciness, they're just honest and tough and direct.

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 became an actor kind of by accident. I was in musical theater and I got a job as an actor in a play and kept going. But I never set out to be an actor; it happened over time.

I 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.

Read more. Read. Read. Read. Deeply, widely, read. Learn all kinds of subjects. The smarter you are as an actor, the better an actor you'll be.

I shoot people in a way that makes the audience feel equal to them. And it's hard to express and it's hard to execute but I think it works on every level - the choice of the material the choice of the actor, my relationship with the actor, and so on.

I know that I am one and I've made a living as an actor and I enjoy being an actor, but when I'm not actually doing it, I forget that I do it.

John Wayne is not just an actor, and a very fine actor - John Wayne is the United States of America.

As an actor, particularly because I'm - I would call myself a character actor. I change my look, my physical appearance and my body, my hair color, my whatever all the time for a role.

I was an actor... or, at least, I was trying to be an actor.

I'm a director's actor; I'm a storyteller's actor.

I had a teacher in Paris, who said that if an actor forgot what it's like to play as a child he shouldn't be an actor. I've always loved being with children. It's marvellous to see the fresh ways they see the world. Watching them look at a tree or a river helps you to understand something that's very important.

I definitely wanted to be an actor. I didn't want to be on TV, I didn't want to be famous, I didn't want to be anyone in particular; I just wanted to do it. I see young people now who look at magazines, or American Idol and their goal is to have that lifestyle - to have good handbags, or go out with cute guys from shows, or whatever. But I definitely wanted to be an actor.

Claude Rains was what we call an actor's actor. He was very involved with himself and his performance.

In actual fact, I wanted to be an actor, but I was a lawyer, and I was a week away from qualifying and was fired. And that's the day I made an announcement: "Hey, for seven years, you thought I was going to be a lawyer. Well, I'm not. I've just lost my job, and I'm packing my bags and moving to London tomorrow to be an actor."

My goal as an actor was to work - to be a working actor, whether it was in theater, and, well, I didn't even consider film and television when I was in New York, but what came along, came along.

There are moments when it's unbelievable how people who work on the hair or on the little bit of skin here, they have no other care or interest since this part of their job is the only thing that needs to look good. So you have to push everybody to the side so that you can have a connection with your actor and give some air to your actor.

My casting process was slightly different and slightly interesting insofar as I knew everybody could act. That's something you've seen. You know people can. You've seen them on the screen and you think either they're a good actor or a bad actor. So that's not the point. What I wanted to do was find people who I thought would have a similar comic sensibility.

An actor rides in a bus or railroad train; he sees a movement and applies it to a new role. The whole garment in which the actor hides himself is made of small externals of observation fitted to his conception of a role.

For me, an actor is really, first and foremost, a person and an individual, more than they are an actor or a professional.

In order to make a movie it isn't enough to have a script, it isn't enough to have a director, it isn't enough to have a male actor and a female actor, it isn't enough to have financing. You have to have them all at the same instant.

If I can be a working actor, if I can be an actor and not have a day job, I'll be fine.

Uta Hagen would say, there's the representational actor and the presentational actor.

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

I think there are always actor parts, and then there are movie-star parts, and an actors always an actor until he does a movie-star part.

Most people assume because I'm an actor that's all I know about and care about, I'm actually a camera geek and a film geek. I grew up making short films the same time I was acting. For me, it's a motion picture, not a play. I'm just as interested in what the camera department is doing and world building through costume design and production design as I am in acting. I think all good directors do that whether they're an actor or not.

I think actors are divided into two groups: one that wants to be an actor to become famous and rich, and the other that wants to be an actor because they have to be. I'm more in the second group.

I grew up in an artistic family where everyone was doing something in one field of the arts or another. I was I think 12 years old when I did my first acting at the Actor's Studio and James Dean once said that the only reason to become and actor is because you have to. I think that you know from a young age if that is a certain rush that you're going to need to satisfy you and to make you feel fulfilled - and if you don't then you shouldn't do it. It's just too brutal of a business most of the time.

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.

When someone who is known as a comedic actor goes to drama, it often doesn't work out, because they really just chose wrong, I think - or maybe they're just not good actors. For me it's important making that transition seamless, and not a huge shock and jumping into cold water. It doesn't feel like I'm trying to shock you or anything. I'm just saying, "I'm a different actor than you thought I was. Don't put me in a box. I'm not just some kid running around screaming curse words." I have other tastes besides comedy. I love comedy, but I love dramatic movies just as much.

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 like this other world, this forgetting of myself. The actor works in order to escape, not to find himself. You become an actor by leaving yourself, and then you have to keep acting. How tragic!

My favorite actor that I look up to is Joseph Gordon-Levitt. His career is something I look up to, I just want to be that guy. He's always part of projects that have a lot of soul and that's what I want to do as an actor.

There is no more reason for a room on a stage to be a reproduction of an actual room than for an actor who plays the part of Napoleon to be Napoleon, or for an actor who plays Death in the old morality play to be dead.

Being singer is different than being an actor, where you call up sources from your own experience that you can apply to whatever Shakespeare drama you're in. But an actor is pretending to be somebody, a singer isn't. And that's the difference. Singers today have to sing songs where there's very little emotion involved. That and the fact that they have to sing hit records from years gone by doesn't leave a lot of room for any kind of intelligent creativity.

I'm an actor and I love to find new collaborations and new characters where I can grow as an actor and human being.

I had to learn how to become a real actor, I had to suffer and be rejected and face that 100 times just like every actor. It wasn't like someone handed it to me

If 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.

Robert DeNiro, who may be the greatest living actor, usually acts in a way which is very stone-faced, like Steve McQueen. For example, Steve McQueen, if you cut the sound, you don't know what he's acting really. He gives to the lines, to the text, something very special, and he's very good. He was a great actor. But, to do a silent movie, you have to have more expressive actors.

In England, I was a Cockney actor. In America, I was an actor.

But I would like to think that it's the actor that makes the difference in these cases. Not the director, not the guy that wrote the book, not the guy that adapted it for the screen, but the actor.

The next actor I meet that uses the term 'courageous' to describe another actor's performance is getting punched in the face.

You can't really judge an actor's abilities by their career, because the business is going to pigeonhole people into whatever turns a profit, and no artist is less in charge of how their work is presented than an actor, the appeal of Vince was that within a great naturalism, he can convey fierce intelligence, complex emotion, and a real warmth married to a real edge, strength and vulnerability and danger and humor. There are essential contradictions at work that makes him fascinating to watch.

I bring excitement on the sets. I'm an exciting actor, overrated, exaggerated. But I'm not an unexciting actor. I excite people. I never lose hope. If I feel that a film is going wrong somewhere, I do even better.

In order to be an actor you really have to be one of those types of people who are risk-takers and have what is considered an actor's arrogance, which is not to say an arrogance in your personal life. But you have to be the type of person who wants the ball with seconds left in the game.

A female's career as an actor is very different from a male's career as an actor. That's just the way it is. So, I'm fascinated by really strong male careers that have inspired me, and also really incredible male roles.