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.

I wouldn't be an actor if it weren't for the English teacher I had my junior year in high school. She's the one who told me I could be an actor. I had never met an actor, I had never seen a real play, only high school plays. I didn't know actors were real, that it was a real job.

When there's an actor involved, the actor's talking to the director or the director's talking to the actor. But when there are not those two people interacting, it's all one person in your own mind, you have to be so extra-clear about what you need.

I'm an actor. I've always been an actor. I've always approached all my comedy as an actor. I don't really care about jokes either. I tire of jokes.

I thought for a minute about an actor and a musician simultaneously, but I think that's always very loaded as an actor when you become a "slash," and you do an actor "slash" anything. You better be really, really good at it.

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.

I don't just act, and that's really important to me. I don't want to just be an actor forever. I want to score movies. I could be an actor first, but I don't only want to be an actor.

When an actor comes to you and starts working with the script, the image of his character that you had in your mind gets substituted with an image of that particular actor. And this is the right way to go. An actor has to be absolutely truthful - this is the only thing required of him, apart from talent of course. It's very easy to understand: you need to absolutely believe in what you see.

What we really have to do is stop the adjective before the job title — whether it's 'black actor,' a 'gay actor' or 'anything actor,' Everybody thinks that equality comes from identifying people, and that's not where equality comes from. Equality comes from treating everybody the same regardless of who they are. I hope the media and the press catches on to that because it's time to move out of 1992.

As an actor going into screenwriting, I was able to understand what type of dialogue feels natural. A lot of the time, as an actor, you don't have the freedom to change what your lines are, and they can often be very unnatural or difficult to portray in a real light.

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

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

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.

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

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.

My abject hatred of actors and the acting world. I went to college as an actor, and halfway through, I switched to playwriting and directing. Then I spent a couple years working in publishing, doing some freelance journalism for The Village Voice and Musician magazine. I thought my life was going to be as a writer, but then I realized I missed performing, so I got into comedy. It was a nice combination of things I was sort of good at. I was a pretty good writer and a decent actor, but I didn't really like acting, and I didn't have the discipline to be a writer.

The delineation between the actor and his part is a practical matter. When the camera runs, you want the actor to be the character.

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?

What happens in Israel, it's not so divided between being a film actor, or a TV actor - usually, we just do everything. I do theater, film, and television, and the theater is mostly financed by the government.

Sometimes you'll see interviews about an actor who was asked to hit the weight room to develop his body for the character, and you hear them complaining about the egg white omelettes they had to eat and the tortures of hitting the gym twice a day - I find that to be a bit saddening, it's all a part of becoming the character and as an actor, that is your job.

I was a guy who needed to go to class, because I had some raw talent that I thought was identifiable, when I finally made a decision to be an actor. And yet I wanted to learn how to really do the stuff. You know, 'How do I get to be a serious 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 know what a good question would be for an actor. What's your least favorite thing that you've ever heard an actor say about acting? Or about being in a movie?

It is one of the few elements in the process that a director really, really can't control: an actor's performance. If you have a director that understands that, it's comforting to an actor. You're starting the relationship more as a collaborator, rather than as an employee or some kind of a soldier trying to execute something you don't organically feel.

I never wanted to be an actor. I never want to be an actor. I want to be a movie star. The whole idea of having to act is too gruesome. It's too ambitious for me.

Every actor has a natural animosity toward every other actor, present or absent, living or dead

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.

For an actor, it's very important to get a clear idea of what a director wants, and their intention for what they want to get out of a scene and how they want to shoot it. Having that knowledge is really valuable, for an actor. It means you can deliver more.

A large part of how an actor works and their process is the stimulation of what's around you, and none more so than in a period piece. This is a modern piece, as much as it is set in a different time, age and myth. If it wasn't relevant, it wouldn't have been made and we wouldn't be putting our energy into it. It's relevant for us today because, in some ways, it throws up a mirror to all of us. As an actor, you get stimulus and you're effected by that, whether it's costumes or funny beards or castles.

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!

Once I hit 25, I realized I had to do more than just be an actor. I love acting, but there's something that makes it difficult to just be a man, a grownup. Not to take away from any actors, but I knew I wasn't going to be Tom Cruise. I knew I was a character actor, which is great and I'm proud of it. But I knew that I wanted to do more. I started producing and directing and writing and stuff for the theater, and then that grew out of hand and I sort of lost my control. I've always loved the process of filmmaking. Now I'm much more into producing docs, but I want to direct features.

It may be a mistake to say this, but I know my limitations as an actor and I know what I can and can not do. Robert De Niro can do everything. I can't. A 'Highlander' movie is basically my thing. What I'm attempting to do is develop my ability as an actor and try to be the best I can be in the fantasy/action genre.

This new economy that's just emerged has a new central economic actor. It's not the worker, the person who produces, nor the person who consumes, the purchaser. It's a new actor that does both things at the same time, call them a creator. They both create and consume in the same single act, and we're just beginning to see the shape of this new economy and it changes not just the economy itself, it's going to change the whole nature of the work relationship.

The biggest challenge for me, as an actor, is to be informed, prepared and focused, at the same time. I had to just keep on working, prepping, reading and imagining, all the way through, but the biggest challenge is always to let go of all that and just be open to others. That's what we do, as actor. We play with each other and we stimulate each other, and we have to be prepared to be stimulated by the other. That's always my big challenge.

I fell in love with film. I didn't start out to be a film actor. I wanted to be a theater 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 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.

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

I'm just an actor. Just a stupid actor.

As soon as I suspect a fine effect is being achieved by accident I lose interest. I am not interested...in unskilled labor. ...The scientific actor is an even worker. Any one may achieve on some rare occasion an outburst of genuine feeling, a gesture of imperishable beauty, a ringing accent of truth; but your scientific actor knows how he did it. He can repeat it again and again and again. He can be depended on.

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.

I never wanted to stay in one genre; I never wanted to be pigeon-holed or defined as the actor who only worked in one genre. I want to be able to work in all different genres. For me it's fun, and that's how I grow as an actor.

In terms of trying to improve as an actor, for me it's always important to return to the stage. After doing a piece of theater for a prolonged period, I can think I must have surely improved in some way as an actor - you must be fitter than you were prior to doing it. For me, theater is very, very important in keeping things fresh and dangerous.

If I have enough ego to say I'm a writer, a director, a producer, and an actor, I should have the energy and the knowledge to write a scene for this great actor named Henry Fonda and direct him in it and have it work.

I'm not really sure if I have anything that inspires me. I think what goes into my work is everything beforehand that I do with my dad. He teaches me acting, and I think maybe without him it would be pretty hard. I started acting for fun, really, because my dad's an actor and my sister's an actor, so I started doing it and it was normal. But it got places really fast, and I started doing feature film auditions and stuff.

I think I always wanted to be an actor - sounds a bit boring, doesn't it? And I pretended once that I wanted to be a vet because one of the teachers asked me and saying you want to be an actor sounds a little bit silly. And I do still feel a bit silly saying it. You feel a bit fraudulent.

Part of an actor's job is to actually adopt the world-view of the character she is playing and to tell the story from that vantage point. If an actor represses large aspects of their personality, they will have a severely limited range and castability. Great actors cultivate effortless access to their subpersonalities. Many acting teachers call this 'freeing your instrument.'

Shammiji is said to be India's answer to Elvis Presley, but I say that Elvis Presley is America's answer to Shammi Kapoor. The mark of a good actor is the belief with which he gives a shot and Shammiji gave his each shot with a strong belief and that makes him a great actor of all times.