Quotes & Sayings About Acting

I mean I don't think it got me interested in acting. I think it might be what makes it so that I can have the idea of the variety of people in the world, different incomes. That helps. When you're going to play someone it's interesting and nice to see experiences that aren't like yours. But there's always the remarkable similarity of all people. — Peter Sarsgaard

Don't delay acting on a good idea. Chances are someone else has just thought of it, too. Success comes to the one who acts first. — H. Jackson Brown Jr.

The trick to being a good actor is getting so involved in your character that the camera disappears, the 50 bored guys eating doughnuts disappear, friends disappear. To get to that point when you don't have to think about it, you're just acting and reacting in those circumstances. — Val Kilmer

I had a bonding problem when I went off and boxed for five years. I was over in Europe and Asia fighting because I wanted to do something different; I was tired of acting. But the thing is, when I was done doing that, I couldn't get a job. — Mickey Rourke

I am acquainted with no immaterial sensuality so delightful as good acting. — Lord Byron

My brother said 'I want to start acting,' and me and my sister just said, 'Oh we'll try it, we'll see.' It was just one of those things - we were just like, 'Oh, we'll see what happens.' — Willow Shields

I'm less needy about needing to express myself through acting. I have many different lives outside of this that are extremely fulfilling. — Richard Gere

I found out I had a real love for comedy and comedy writing. The logic was, there weren't too many female comedians, so I thought I might as well try a field that had fewer competitors than the field I was in, which was acting, singing and dancing. — Rita Rudner

Not taboo - it's just that straight actors still risk their careers commercially and economically. They have to please the crowd - they're movie stars; their image is their industry. It goes beyond acting. — Ang Lee

I retired from acting the same time they stopped hiring me. But following my own thing of making these small indie movies has been the happiest I've ever been. — Bobcat Goldthwait

The best preparation for acting is life - observing life and people and observing yourself. All that becomes your library. So when you have to research a part, a scene or an emotion, you go into the library and get what you need. — Kate Capshaw

In other words, introverts are capable of acting like extroverts for the sake of work they consider important, people they love, or anything they value highly. — Susan Cain

I detest acting because it is sheer drudgery. — Tallulah Bankhead

I did a modeling gig for Burberry once, and it was a great experience, but no I am not a model. I want to be a model because it's a lot easier than acting. — Alex Pettyfer

War as a moral metaphor is limited, limiting, and dangerous. By reducing the choices of action to "a war against" whatever-it-is, you divide the world into Me or Us (good) and Them or It (bad) and reduce the ethical complexity and moral richness of our life to Yes/No, On/Off. This is puerile, misleading, and degrading. In stories, it evades any solution but violence and offers the reader mere infantile reassurance. All too often the heroes of such fantasies behave exactly as the villains do, acting with mindless violence, but the hero is on the "right" side and therefore will win. Right makes might. — Ursula K. Le Guin

It's much harder to play beloved than to play a rotten guy. Rotten guy is a piece of cake. So playing a beloved person really sets a high bar for your behavior and your acting and what you project. — Bill Murray

I was lucky, and once I moved to L.A., I didn't have to get another job besides acting. But I wouldn't trade my previous jobs for anything. — Judy Greer

We understand it still that there is no easy road to freedom. We know it well that none of us acting alone can achieve success. We must therefore act together as a united people, for national reconciliation, for nation building, for the birth of a new world. Let there be justice for all. Let there be peace for all. Let there be work, bread, water and salt for all. Never, never and never again shall it be that this beautiful land will again experience the oppression of one by another and suffer the indignity of being the skunk of the world. Let freedom reign. — Nelson Mandela

I was very close to my father. At the age of ten I wanted to do plays, and my father was very encouraging. When I applied to different acting schools, he was right there and very supportive. — Kim Cattrall

I do find it strange, doing magazine shoots. Photographers always go, 'Why don't you like to have your picture taken? That's what you do for a living anyway. Just pretend you're acting. It's the same thing!' — James McAvoy

Wonderful?" wrote J.O. Young in his diary. "To stand cheering, crying, waving your hat and acting like a damn fool in general. No one who has spent all but 16 days of the this war as a Nip prisoner can really know what it means to see 'Old Sammy' buzzing around over camp. — Laura Hillenbrand

In the theater, you're so much more in charge as an actor. For better or for worse, you know what the audience is seeing. But you can be acting your socks off on film, and then you see the movie, and the camera is on the other actor, or they've cut out the lines you thought were significant, or they've adjusted the plot. So much of it is out of your control. — Susan Sarandon

If there is any sense of order to the universe, acting is what I am meant to do. I'm not manufactured. I know acting isn't real, that it's temporary. If there is any theme to the roles I play, it is emotional vulnerability and availability. — DJ Qualls

Everything that you do is a challenge. And acting is just building up your concentration and being able to listen and to do the ridiculous. — Clint Eastwood

It was always part of the plan to move into acting. — Aaliyah

I started acting before that when I was about 13 or 14. — Stephen Dorff

Acting is a very strange industry in that it flows in these weird ways, I'll be so busy for 6 months and then nothing for a couple months, so it's hard for me to focus and stuff. — Alia Shawkat

The legal profession, politics and acting are very closely tied: the whole point is to have an idea and get it across to a listener, whether it is one person or five thousand in a hall. — Kevin Spacey

Acting is not talking, it's living off the other fellow!!! — Sanford Meisner

There is a growing frustration that the EU is seen as something that is done to people rather than acting on their behalf. And this is being intensified by the very solutions required to resolve the economic problems. — David Cameron

I don't know if acting is genetic. Maybe it's environmental. — Freddie Prinze Jr.

Acting can be a really silly thing. It's like playing dress-up. — Paul Giamatti

I was cursed with age, really. You do that stupid thing at 12 years old when you say something and it kind of sticks with you for the rest of your life. So, I believe I said I wanted to be a fishery manager. In hindsight, I think acting could be a better route. — Tom Felton

My dream as a youngster was to be like Olivier. To be a great stage actor. To be a great Shakespearean actor. To me that is the Olympics of acting. — Armand Assante

My acting is still being recognized for the fact that I wasn't nominated. — Eva Longoria

I was studying to be an architect, I wasn't plotting to join the movies. Films were just another career option. I took acting up with the same schoolgirl enthusiasm I had for examinations. Acting is a job and I take it very seriously. — Aishwarya Rai Bachchan

I was picked up on a London street by a model agent. She took me to her office and then sent me to Paris to work in shows. It was supposed to be two weeks, but I ended up living there with my Zimbabwean boyfriend. I made enough money modeling and acting in French movies to buy a nice flat. — Saffron Burrows

It's easy for people to mistake most musicians as living the easy life. It takes a while to get to that point. I'm sure it's like that for acting and television. — Chaz Bundick

My dad said, 'If no one was giving me acting work, I'd have to be prepared to create it myself.' — Domhnall Gleeson

We feel like acting like a Christian, following the steps of Christ, is much more important than following a doctrine. — Isabel Ruiz Lucero

I love the business. Hooking is
just acting laced with lust."
BUNNY Stilettos And Steel — Jeri Estes

I would rather do a play because it's instantaneous. You go on the stage, and you know whether it's happening or not. Somebody asked me 'What is acting?' And I said, 'Acting is listening.' And if you ain't listening, nobody's listening. — Charles Durning

Rigidity is the enemy of acting. And I think that people who stay up all night focusing on every beat they're going to do the next day always end up getting screwed. — Jay Baruchel

God's mark of approval, whenever you obey Him, is peace. He sends an immeasurable, deep peace; not a natural peace, "as the world gives," but the peace of Jesus. Whenever peace does not come, wait until it does, or seek to find out why it is not coming. If you are acting on your own impulse, or out of a sense of the heroic, to be seen by others, the peace of Jesus will not exhibit itself. — Oswald Chambers

At Cornell, my acting teacher said you cannot be religious and be an artist. I sort of got it, because faith is a comfort and art comes from a lot of places, in a lot of people, from the dark chasm. — Catherine Hicks

He's treating her like she's fourteen and he's a normal adult, acting like he's taken her under his wing. Like he needs her detecting skills, same as Barrons did to Mac, and she's falling for it, same as Mac. He's lining up his dominoes, so they fall more easily when he feels like pushing them over, conserving energy so he doesn't have to hunt her when he's ready to kill her. — Karen Marie Moning

There is a need for aloneness, which I don't think most people realise for an actor. It's almost having certain kinds of secrets for yourself that you'll let the whole world in on only for a moment, when you're acting. But everybody is always tugging at you. They'd all like sort of a chunk of you. — Marilyn Monroe

My friends in Australia, they grew up with me acting, so they're used to it. — Kodi Smit-McPhee

I am impressed and distressed at how passive hierarchical organizations make people. There's often a lot of overt activity, but it's not going anywhere, it's game-playing. It's play-acting at work. — Judith M Bardwick

Nor was I following how someone who seemed so sweet and genteel at Bible study was acting like someone who'd contracted mad cow disease. Or maybe politics made people act slightly demon-possessed. — Christy Barritt

I like acting and being a musician. It's like comparing apples and oranges. But I really like my day job. I've always played music since I was 12, and I guess I always will. — Dennis Quaid

Allan praised Herbert for a job well done and for acting the part well. Herbert blushed, while dismissing the praise, saying it wasn't hard to play stupid when you are stupid. Allan said that he didn't know how hard it was, because the idiots Allan had met so far in his life had all tried to do the opposite. — Jonasson, Jonas

Acting after being asked is compliance. Acting without being asked is kindness. — Ron Kaufman

I couldn't believe it! I mean, I'd always dreamed of acting on the screen - my previous background was all theater - but I wasn't sure if the opportunity would ever present itself. Not only was this acting for the screen, this was acting in 'The Hunger Games!' I knew that I had to give this audition my all. — Jacqueline Emerson

I had given myself a sort of early retirement when I left the scene in 1985. All of the people in my family worked until they dropped, including my father. I decided to take a little time to enjoy life. I traveled, built my dream house, rescued a few dogs. My return to music, and acting, was deliberate, part of my musical arc. — J. D. Souther

I never thought about acting before I started modeling, but since then I've been in short films and music videos, and I got interested. It felt natural to switch over. — Rila Fukushima

Act before you think - your instincts are more honest than your thoughts. — Sanford Meisner

Would you just fall in love with me already so I can stop acting normal. — Van Krishna

Those who are truly alive are kindly and unsuspecting in their human relationships and consequently endangered under present conditions. They assume that others think and act generously, kindly and helpfully, in accordance with the laws of life. This natural attitude, fundamental to healthy children as well as primitive man, inevitably represents a great danger in the struggle for a rational way of life as long as the emotional plague subsists, because the plague-ridden impute their own manner of thinking and acting to their fellow men. A kindly man believes that all men are kindly, while one infected with the plague believes that all men lie and cheat and are hungry for power. In such a situation, the living are at an obvious disadvantage. When they give to the plague-ridden they are sucked dry, then ridiculed or betrayed. — Wilhelm Reich

To me, getting to do music and videos, you work on a character. Being onstage is acting; you get to be larger than life and larger than yourself. — Carrie Underwood

Zhang is a friend of mine: he said forget about acting and just do normal things in the movie. — Jet Li

I was pursuing my acting career, but I was silent on the LGBT issue, the issue that was closest to me. I knew if I came out then, I'd have had to change careers. — George Takei

When I was 16, I played Macbeth at school and my English teacher said, 'I think you may have acting talent. Try to get into the National Youth Theatre of Great Britain and see where you get.' I wouldn't have thought of that at all. I wanted to be a surgeon, but I wasn't a clever man. — David Suchet

Somebody once said that you can never act and be another person; you're only acting facets of yourself. I think there's a lot of truth in that. — Nathan Fillion

Encounter: Doubt, Shame, Humiliation. It will finally be worth it. Acting is more about courage than anything else. — David Mamet

Acting became important. It became an art that belonged to the actor, not to the director or producer, or the man whose money had bought the studio. It was an art that transformed you into somebody else, that increased your life and mind. I had always loved acting and tried hard to learn it. But with Michael Chekhov, acting became more than a profession to me. It became a sort of religion. — Marilyn Monroe

I caught malaria, and the medicines caused a hallucination. I dreamt I won an Oscar for acting. I know it sounds stupid, but it was so real, and I just knew then it would happen. — Rebel Wilson

But I'm not objective when I'm acting. — Laura Innes

Acting in the movies is just like ditch-digging — Margaret Sullavan

I don't want easy. I want the impossible. I want love so thick, I drown in it; it's the only thing worth having and, I'm sorry Kona, you're a nice guy when you're not acting like an entitled jackass, but I really don't think you're capable of being anything more than that. — Eden Butler

Yes, she doesn't really look like either of us, does she? Perhaps she's a girl who's fallen madly in love with me and persists in following me wherever I go."
"My talent is shape-shifting, Will, not acting," said Tessa, and at that Jem laughed out loud. — Cassandra Clare

If one cannot see gravitation acting here, he has no soul. — Richard Feynman

I was the suburban kid of Scottish parents, and the idea of an acting career was so beyond my experience. I didn't even know there were drama schools until a friend told me. — Lindsay Duncan

When I first moved out to Los Angeles I was thinking, you know, I wanted to be an actor but I didn't really know what acting was about. I thought if I could be a model, or even do commercials and stuff like that for the rest of my life, I'd be happy. — Michael Biehn

What I am doing is not acting. I am playing myself. — Charlotte Rampling

When asked what it takes to succeed in the acting profession, Bette Davis would answer, "the courage to be hated." — Frank Langella

I was ashamed to admit I was hipped to the idea of acting. That's why I started in with the props. — John Wayne

We must practice living deeply, loving, and acting with charity if we wish to truly honor Jesus. — Thich Nhat Hanh

At the risk of being forgotten completely by the media, I went to college and pursued a passion that had nothing to do with acting: mathematics. — Danica McKellar

If I stayed a football player, my career would have been over 20 years ago. As it is, my knees are shot. I found I got the same good feeling in acting that I had in sports, but I found I could have a more profound impact on people. — William Petersen

Am I proud of being straight? No. You know why? Because if I start acting proud, that's going to make me seem kind of gay. — Stephen Colbert

Strident minorities, acting on the growing disposition to censor their opponents, ensure that the deeper the question, the more likely it is to be settled by shallow arguments. — Roger Scruton

I did direct two short movies. I learned many things, and one of the things I learned was that I am not a director. It has to be visceral, and it's not for me. I feel much more comfortable acting. — Vincent Cassel

Acting itself is quite scary. Some people say that actors are show-offs, very egotistical and all that kind of stuff, but it is quite scary. — Michael Sheen

I met many Russians over the years who were convinced my brothers and I were a cabal, pulling strings behind the scenes to shape American policy. The Soviets had no conception of how a pluralistic democracy works and believed elected officials, up to and including the president of the United States, were only figureheads acting out the roles dictated to them by the real "powers that be" - in this case, my family. — David Rockefeller

I'd always dabbled in acting. — Nelsan Ellis

... as a convention, you get up and walk to the window to make the audience believe that you're looking out. It's for the audience, not for you! And what it means to you is something emotional [...] If you went to the Actors Studio you'd spend six months seeing the snow before you could say, 'Look at the snow.' This takes a terrible burden away from the actor, who thinks he's got to see the woods and the snow. 'Give me my gun! I see a rabbit! Give me my gun!' "

Meisner sounds thrilled at the possibility of a hunt.

"That happens when you're still sitting there reading. Then when they put in the scenery you move to the window. Isn't that simple? How simple it is to solve the problem of seeing things when you know that it's all in you emotionally, and that walking to the window is only a convention. — Sanford Meisner

I think acting is revealing to people what it means to be human. — Nick Enright

You see..." Nash said, acting doctorly, "you've got to keep the testicles away from the body's heat for optimal sperm count." He snatched two chicken balls from the container in front of him and cupped them in his hand. He laid a spring roll between them. "That's the biggest source of the sperm count issue for many men: their choice of underwear keeps their testicles snug up against the body. The testes become overheated. — Jean Oram

We find the general work of mankind is being carried on from day to day by the mass of people acting in harmony as if by instinct. If they were instinctively violent, the world would end in no time. — Mahatma Gandhi

My sister started acting professionally when she was twelve, but I wanted to go to college first. — Rooney Mara

The actual time you're acting is miniscule compared to the time you're getting ready to do the work. The big difference on series television is, there's not a lot of hanging-out time. You're pumping those pages out, you're doing six, seven, eight pages a day. And I like that pace. — Joe Mantegna

Almost huffed at him, but I remembered Karen telling me a boy should kiss the girl on the lips first. I wanted it to happen like that, like in the movies I'd seen. With the way Kota was acting, it was as if he didn't want to do it. He was presenting his cheek as if this was as far as he was willing. — C.L.Stone

All that celebrity stuff isn't me. It's just not acting. — Michelle Ryan

The kind of acting I used to enjoy no longer exists because your prime consideration is the budget, running time, the cost - and whether they'll understand it in Milwaukee. — Dirk Bogarde

I injured myself quite badly when I was seventeen. I broke my ankle, and it didn't heal in such a way that I could keep dancing at the level I wanted to. It wasn't like, 'Oh my god, I'll never play the violin again.' I could, but not at the level I wanted. So, I segued into acting, the other thing that was also meaningful to me. — Kristin Lehman

I went to college in Pittsburgh at Carnegie Mellon University ... studied acting there. Then I went to New York for about five years. I moved out here about 10 years ago. — Laura San Giacomo

One of the first exercises we did in acting class my freshman year was to stand in two rows, two lines facing each other as a class, and just make sounds and move in some completely nonsensical way out into the center of the room. Sort of make an idiot out of yourself, essentially, but to be okay with that. — Chris Parnell

As an actor, acting is like playing a sport. You do this thing that's intangible, and while it's happening, it's great. But then when it's done, there's really no tangible product. Someone else is capturing it and turning it into something tangible. — Chris Evans

I know this'll sound obnoxious, but acting was very much an accident for me. I didn't have, like, posters of Marlon Brando in my bedroom when I was growing up. — Michael Shannon