Quotes About Actor

An actor uses his body as a tool and an instrument. In the same way a musician plays an instrument, the actor uses his body to convey feeling and emotion. An animator uses a pencil or a computer to create the same thing, the same exact way... An actor is taking words that are not his own, and he has to bring some kind of authentic life to those words. It's the same goal, to create this authentic life. Even if it's a drawing, or if it's a cartoon, you're still trying to create authenticity because, if the character emotes authentically, it has a power to connect with the audience.

[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.

I never think of an actor as a model. A model wears what you tell them to wear, that's their job. An actor is different. It's important to work with the actor because in the end that's who the audience sees and that's the success that you need.

I don't want to just be an actor my whole life. I mean I do want to be an actor my whole life but not only an actor, I want to be an artist.

People are more willing to accept a singer as an actor, than an actor as a singer.

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 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.

The most important definition of an actor, the job of the actor, is to serve the writer, not yourself. Way too many actors serve themselves.

And my father, being a good Swiss puritan, always really insisted that if I was going to be an actor, I shouldn't just be an actor, I should know about the whole process.

I live with someone, actor Peter Krause, who didn't find an interest in being an actor until the very end of college. So my message is: There's so much freedom left. There's no ticking clock. It's just not true.

When 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.

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 have to say from an actor's perspective, to work with a director who has been an actor through most of their career is a pleasure. They generally have a very deep understanding of the process of what you're doing, of how you are building and exploring the character.

Every 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.

If you're not an actor, or if you're any other kind of artist, there's this sense that, "I must express this thing." Why make a painting if you don't feel like you have to for something inside of yourself? Why make a song if you don't feel like you have to because there's something that you need to get out? And when you're an actor and you're not performing text that you've written, I think there's this bizarre disconnect with the must-ness of it.

My experience as a young actor on network television was that I couldn't make it work. I was drowning as an actor.

Getting bad reviews or doing something thats not great is also really good for you as an actor. It also makes me feel as an actor that Ive earned my stripes a bit.

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.

Theatre is the principal job of an actor. An actor's job is to tell a story to someone in a room. TV and film can be great and I really love doing it, but it is a different way of telling a story.

TV 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.

I never started out to be an action actor. I was an ensemble actor. "Rocky" was an ensemble film. "F.I.S.T." was an ensemble. "Paradise Alley" was an ensemble.

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?

I gained a lot of confidence after 'IP Man' as being a true actor. I went on to tackle what it is an actor is supposed to do before a film. Do a lot of research, get into the character. That's what I did with 'Dragon.'

Josh Brolin is an actor that I really, really like; he's fantastic. I worked with him once; he's a really great actor.

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.

I suppose the underlying current for me is the idea of not doing something I've done before. I call myself a character actor and I'm always trying to stay a character actor.

I knew I wanted to be an actor, and I didn't necessarily need or want to be famous or a celebrity actor. But I wanted to be somewhere where there would be no ceiling on what I could accomplish, and I felt like if I stayed in St. Louis I might have a really great regional theater career or something, but that I wasn't going to be able to get much further than that. And it felt like New York and L.A. were the two places where you could end up being a TV star or you could end up doing regional theater, which would have been fine as well.

I played guitar. I've always considered myself an actor, but I wasn't making a living as an actor. So I was in a couple of folk groups that managed to keep me in underwear and burritos.

Just as the good actor perform well whatever role the poet assigns, so too must the good man perform whatever Fortune assigns. For she, says Bion, just like a poet, sometimes assigns the leading role, sometimes that of the supporting role; sometimes that of a king, sometimes that of a beggar. Do not, therefore, being a supporting actor, desire the role of the lead.

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.

I lost 90 pounds and my blood pressure went down to a normal level and the salt in my urine disappeared. And that was when I had to make the transition from fat character actor to thin character actor.

I don't think leave the Harry Potter franchise. Not wanting to act, yes. I think it was that stage of rebellion, really. Everyone goes through it. I thought, "I've been an actor. My parents are proud of me being an actor. I want to do something else." I wanted to join the Army, actually, or be in the Air Force, or something like that. I still wouldn't mind doing that. Obviously, it's a bit late for me now.

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.

I am a professional actor and I don't go about moralizing about what the character does. Otherwise, seriously, why be an actor? You're not making some kind of social statement. That's not what actors do. They may inadvertently do it, but it's because of the script, not the acting.

When you go for something because you're curious about it, you get psyched up about the chance of getting into it. It's like an actor meets a role, and you slip into that body and see what happens, to experience certain conditions, to adopt a certain character. Even shooting is a study of the character. I think both the character and the actor, and eventually the filmmaker - myself - are finding a way to accept their environment and being accepted and feel comfortable of themselves.

You're not actually being a good actor all the time. But people refer to me as a good actor because they read it someplace, not because they've made up their own mind. So I'm very lucky!

I'm an actor. My life as an actor depends on who sends me what. I'm just taking the best stuff that I can find that's sent my way, regardless of how big or little the paycheck is. I don't want to work for scale anymore. I'm at a point now where, no matter how good something is, I'm not going to kill myself and end up in the hole.

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.

Someone I met years ago explained to me the difference between a personality and an actor, a personality being Eddie Murphy or Roseanne Barr, and an actor being Morgan Freeman and Alfre Woodard or Marlon Brando.

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 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'm an actor. Never trust an actor, whatever their energy is. I suppose you guys see that side of me, but I'm sure there's plenty of people close to me who've seen the other one. I think if we're all honest with ourselves, we all know that internal rage.

Sometimes it's harder to play good tennis with a bad tennis player - the same way it's hard to be a good actor with a bad actor. It's just an unpleasant experience.

Sometimes, I even recite the role to the actor if it's not clear. And I beg them not to imitate me, because I'm not a good actor.

I don't think of myself as a TV actor. I think of myself as a film, television and Off-Off-Off-Off Broadway actor.

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

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.

I truly believe that the job of an actor and the drive of an actor is simulating the internal journey in life which is to get deeper and deeper into our understanding of who we are.