Quotes About Actor

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.

I've always felt it's the directors purview to say what; it's the actor's purview to say how. It's not good for an actor to have the big picture in mind - it bollocks you up. An actor's purview is the tiny little... We measure our performance in seconds.

In this day and age, if you're aspiring to be an actor, and you're putting all your eggs in one basket, you could be disappointed. I started out as an actor, but I forced myself to be a writer, even though I wasn't very good at it and had never written. I don't think I ever passed an English course in my life. My first 8 to 10 scripts were pretty horrendous, but I stayed at it until I eventually found a voice and a subject that people were interested in. So, I recommend that you go out and try to be as versatile as possible: writer, actor, producer and especially director.

The amount of preparation I saw from someone like [David] Fincher, and how aware he is of everybody else's job on the set, and how much respect he has for every aspect of the film, and every aspect of the frame - that's the type of actor I am now; it's not the type of actor I was then. But without understanding his process, and then coming to learn it later on, I would never be the actor I am now.

Bob Duvall is a great actor because each time out, he creates a whole, complete character. You have the feeling that you're not seeing an actor at all, but a fully realized human being. Think of how he was in The Godfather. If you didn't know Bobby, you'd think that he really was Tom, the consigliere. Then you see him in Santini, and he's completely different. He's not only a personality, he's a consummate actor.

A good actor makes clear the meaning of the words. A better actor gives also the emotion of the part. The best actor adds emotion of which the character is unconscious.

You can't get an actor to do something that is beyond his range, so you have to be aware of the range of the actor and, if necessary, alter the part to suit the actor.

The bad thing about being with an actor is that the role he's in stays with him all the time. The good thing about being with an actor - well, I can't think of any good thing.

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.

As an actor, you may do things that aren't politically correct. Unless you're an actor who only does things for political reasons. I believe if we don't do the good, bad, and the ugly, we're not going to progress.

I don't see myself as one type of actor. When you get one role, you start to get cast in that role for awhile because that's what people have seen you do, and have hopefully seen you do it successfully. And so, it becomes an easier thing to see you as, for casting directors and directors, and they start to think of you as that particular person or type of character. But, for me, I'm just an actor, first and foremost. The actors I respect are the real character actors, who are the real chameleon actors that completely change from role to role.

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.

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.

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."

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.

As an actor you're only supposed to be a lover. I am a romantic hero though I don't like that tag. With all the hardships, problems, illness, goodness, badness, awards and money... an actor will always be a lover. And a lover makes mistakes. You'll be silly, nonsensical and stupid.

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.

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

My attitude as an actor, because I'm a stage actor, is whatever the director tells you to do, you try it. You don't resist what a director is giving you.

An actor puts himself in the hands of a director. And the director's first responsibility, obviously, is to tell the story, but the smallest thing that's not true reads on the screen. So if a director sees that an actor is not believable, he needs to help him become believable.

Do what you want I don't care. That's the thing to say to an actor. Most people don't understand that. Not to manipulate them. That's what you say to an actor. You got a problem with the whole environment in doing that? Fine, what are we going to do to make the scene work? Now you have someone on your side. Now you have someone working with you.

How do you say one actor is better than another actor? You can definitely say that in the Olympics if it's the same race and someone wins the race. The only way to really do it and have it be sincere would be if you get all the actors together, and they're all playing the same part, and then you rate which one made you feel the most.

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.

My dad was a college football coach, so we're a big athletic family. I was either going to be an athlete or an actor. As an actor, I hoped I would be able to bond the two.

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.

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.

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.

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 not saying that Sam J. Jones was Flash Gordon - there's no such thing. No actor can be the person, that's a bunch of crap. People pay to see an actor be himself, whether he plays Hamlet or whatever.

If you're an actor, a real actor, you've got to be on the stage. But you mustn't go on the stage unless it's absolutely the only thing you can do.

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

The Actor should make you forget the existence of author and director, and even forget the actor.

I've never taken a job as an actor that I wasn't 100-percent sure I wanted to do. I've never had to think about whether or not I wanted to do something, and there have always been a lot of factors to that. I don't think I'm an actor who's driven by character, to be honest.

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

Géza Röhrig is just incredible because he's not an actor, he's a Hungarian poet. He also happens to be a brilliant actor. He's totally unusual, the way he talks and thinks and operates isn't in the same language as you're used to from actors who've been in a lot of things before. It brings this completely bizarre and fresh, wonderful way of approaching everything that I love being around. Not where I'm, as a producer, having to interact with him as an artist, but as somebody who can stand back and admire what he's bringing to this thing that I've nurtured to create a stage for him.

I thought I was going to be a theater actor. I moved to New York after college and did some plays and worked a lot. Once the realities of living as a theatrical actor hit me, I realized I wanted to start making a little bit of money and not have to bartend and work in theater.

I'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.

Acting in a scene is like paddling a canoe from a pebbly beach on to the river, the writer builds the canoe, and the actor provides the river. The river is the actor's thoughts and emotions.

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.

I never wanted to be an actor and to this day I don`t. I can`t get a handle on it. An actor wants to become someone else. I am a song-and-dance man and I enjoy being myself, which is all I can do.

The only disadvantage to directing if you've been an actor is how self-conscious you are. When I'm directing, I'm always so aware when I'm speaking to an actor of how easily I could throw them off by saying something careless or not being clear or concise. So it does make you watch your words in a way that sometimes is unhelpful.

Competition is healthy. Competition is life. Yet most actors refuse to acknowledge this. They don't want to compete. They want to get along. And they are therefore not first-rate actors. The good actor is the one who competes, willingly, who enjoys competing. An actor must compete, or die...Peacefulness and the avoidance of trouble won't help in his acting. It is just the opposite he must seek.

You have to have the passion. I could not live if I wasn't an actor. If you're just in it for beautiful dresses and movie stars, then I think you should not be an actor.

You always agree with other actor beforehand: Are we going to fake it or are you OK with me hitting you? I've never met an actor who doesn't want to really go there. I would be disappointed in myself if I was like "Don't hit me."

The attitude of the actor is his interpretation of what he reads, and the written word is what creates the role in the actor's mind, and I guess in reading the things that were given to me, I reacted as you guys saw me, you know.