Acting Character Quotes & Sayings

Men of energy of character must have enemies; because there are two sides to every question, and taking one with decision, and acting on it with effect, those who take the other will of course be hostile in proportion as they feel that effect. — Thomas Jefferson

She did not care for children's books in which the children grew up, as what "growing up" entailed (in life as in books) was a swift and inexplicable dwindling of character; out of a clear blue sky the heroes and heroines abandoned their adventures for some dull sweetheart, got married and had families, and generally started acting like a bunch of cows. — Donna Tartt

According to Free Trait Theory, we are born and culturally endowed with certain personality traits - introversion, for example - but we can and do act out of character in the service of "core personal projects."
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. Free Trait Theory explains why an introvert might throw his extroverted wife a surprise party or join the PTA at his daughter's school. It explains how it's possible for an extroverted scientist to behave with reserve in her laboratory, for an agreeable person to act hard-nosed during a business negotiation, and for a cantankerous uncle to treat his niece tenderly when he takes her out for ice cream. — Susan Cain

Acting is so exciting to me. It's a thrill; otherwise I wouldn't do it. Not to be hokey, but I think life is definitely worth living, whether you're working or not. For an actor, the character is the thing ... it doesn't matter what medium you're in. as long as you have something to do. — Elizabeth Mitchell

Beauty's only skin deep.
Everybody has ugly days.
We're all made of the same stuff underneath.
Acting right is better than looking right.
Realize what make you special beyond looks.
Evil can look pretty on the outside. — Shannon Delany

There's a lot of romanticisation of the intuitive actor and method acting and all kinds of notions about getting inside a character and coming out from there. — Edward Norton

The least glimmering or shade of acting, in man or woman, is a sure motive of envy in the rest; and, if their malice can't persuade the town's-people into a dislike of their performance, they'll cruelly endeavor to taint their characters ... — Charlotte Charke

There's a kind of acting that goes on in my head when I'm writing a character where I put myself in their place. — Jeffrey Eugenides

If you're really being honest with yourself when you're acting, part of it is touching the real you. You can only separate yourself so much from the character. Those vulnerable moments do touch me. — John C. Reilly

I'm really shy with my acting when it's off, because the camera gives me an excuse to be in character, whereas otherwise I would just feel like an idiot. — Brendan Fehr

I really think that studying theater early on really helped me to be able to identify how to get into a character, because it's such a mysterious thing. Learning objective acting in the beginning of my career was the best thing I could have ever done. — Sufe Bradshaw

I do this acting thing mostly for myself. I like to make a connection and communicate with the audience to make myself feel less lonely. I also do it to develop my own character, so sometimes I do it to just be away in a certain area that I've never been to. But mostly, the story has to do something for me. — Carice Van Houten

Sometimes I am kind of the opposite of my character. But that's the thing about acting, you get to play people who are not like you at all. — Dakota Fanning

True freedom is the capacity for acting according to one's true character, to be altogether one's self, to be self-determined and not subject to outside coercion. — Corliss Lamont

Acting offers me an outlet. Here is the perfect opportunity to spend fleeting moments becoming an entirely different person; to experience a character entirely unlike myself, but to also make such a character a part of me. There is no routine here; there is no boredom. — Osric Chau

Whether I build a character from the ground up or develop one, whether within my own copyright or in licensed work, I can step into that character's mind. It takes a kind of voluntary dissociation akin to method acting, military planning, marketing, or detective work: to think like the other guy and work out what he's going to do next. — Karen Traviss

I knew how to act and had studied acting and enjoyed it, but I'd never pushed myself to really perform as an actor, and create a role, and have the whole character's backstory. — Eli Roth

In a funny way, acting, to me, is all make-believe, even if the film has unicorns in it or is a normal movie that can be set in real-life time. I'm still imagining that I'm a different character, so it's all, in a funny way, like fantasy. — Elle Fanning

Mads Mikkelsen's acting is very subtle, precise, nuanced, so he brings something completely different to the character. If you compare Mads' Hannibal to Anthony Hopkins' for example. Not to mention that Mads Mikkelsen is very handsome and sexy, so he brings that to the character as well. — Caroline Dhavernas

Seriously, my music really does help my acting, and, like, getting in and out of a character from a different lifestyle and writing a song about it. Likewise, my acting inspires the music because I can write a theme that I wouldn't necessarily approach at all in life. — Bryan Greenberg

I think when I started acting it was the first time I got the freedom of expression. I was able to express certain emotions and feelings that I could put into other characters, so it was a good way for me to run away from ho I personally was. I could be a ninja, I could be a pirate or I could be in a play y'know. — Adam Beach

As we mature and grow older we collect a lot of baggage, and a lot of that stuff you collect on life's journey gets in the way of acting. My kids can imagine a character and transform in the blink of an eye. It's so simple for kids, so complex for adults. — David Wenham

After 'Prom Night' I did two movies where I was playing a prostitute. I gravitate towards characters that have some sort of inner turmoil or some sort of character arc. That's the great thing about acting, so many different things and being really diverse in your choices. — Brittany Snow

Acting has helped me understand people, not only because you are acting as a character, but also because you are watching other actors work. That really helps you identify in life when someone is acting, not being true. — Steve Martin

There was a lot of dancing in '76, '78, in the '80s. A lot of dancing. The burn years. A lot of dancing. And for a while, working fit in with all that. 'Moonlighting' - that wasn't acting. It was people telling me 'Let's create a character who is you, so you can play him the way you are. The guy you are at night.' It was fun. — Bruce Willis

People find it hard to get their heads around nominating a computer-generated character, but every time you see Gollum on the screen, that's me who is acting up there - even if it is behind a mass of pixels - and it's my voice you hear. — Andy Serkis

Acting is a skill that not only requires talent, but a determination: The willpower to shake off reality and plunge yourself into yourself into a character than you have to act on. — Low Kay Hwa

I have an occasionally recurring stutter, but not when in character on stage in a play. Odd. James Earl Jones has the same pattern; he stutters in everyday life but not when acting. Preparation requires an actor's concentration to make the words belong to another person, which is its own sort of trance. — John Casey

There is a perfect rout of characters in every man - and every man is like an actor's trunk, full of strange creatures, new & old. But an actor and his trunk are two different things — Wallace Stevens

With big, emotional roles it's very easy, especially if you've grown up in the American school of acting, to exploit your own pain. You have to be careful about that, because 9 times out of 10, your pain is not appropriate to the character. — Laura Linney

I like the character roles. Somewhere back there I really came to the conclusion in my mind that the difference between acting and stardom was major. And that if you become a star, people are going to go to see you. If you remain an actor, they're going to go and see the story you're in. — Morgan Freeman

I think when you're working with a character that another writer is acting as - for lack of a better word - custodian of, your obligation as a professional is to not do anything that violates that 'primary' take. — Greg Rucka

The best thing about acting is that I get to lose myself in another character and actually get paid for it ... It's a great outlet. I'm not really sure who I am - it seems I change every day. — Leonardo DiCaprio

I personally like to talk to people when I'm not doing a scene, still acting as if I'm in Gotham when I'm on set because I don't really like to break character, since I sometimes get distracted. I may get distracted when I'm talking to people and having fun; then I have to check myself. — Camren Bicondova

The point of acting is to hide yourself and get lost in character. To play the same character in eighteen movies would be defeating the purpose I believe so I try to keep a little bit of diversity. — Columbus Short

As long as you have the acting chops and the desire to get inside a character, you can play anything. — Andy Serkis

I want to establish a wide range and play all kinds of parts. It's that sort of acting career I really respect. I like to turn a sharp left from whatever I've done before because that keeps me awake. That's why I want to be an actor - I don't want to play endless variations on one character. — Tim Curry

How you look is part of what acting is, but the way I look at it, every actor is a character actor. Someone once told me at a casting, 'You're a character actor in a leading man's body,' and I can live with that. — Santiago Cabrera

It is a mournful fact that most men, and indeed all men of worldly character, have so much regard to public opinion that they dare not act according to the dictates of their consciences when acting thus would incur the popular frown. — Charles Grandison Finney

For women and men, but especially women, with on camera acting you have to look a certain way. You have to present yourself as the most attractive version of yourself that you can be, and then you're judged based on how attractive you are or if you are the right look for the character. — Ashly Burch

I have quite a rich inner life, and I'm constantly looking for a way to express that. I haven't found it yet in acting. When you're playing a character, you're only going to find outlets for very specific parts of your inner world. — Daniel Radcliffe

Elinor placed all that was astonishing in this way of acting to his mother's account; and it was happy for her that he had a mother whose character was so imperfectly known to her, as to be the general excuse for every thing strange on the part of her son. — Jane Austen

The pleasure from acting comes from having great writing to work with. If it's well written and the character is interesting, then, as an actor, that's the raw material I need. — Aasif Mandvi

It kind of varies. I don't have a method yet. It depends on the script and the character I think I need. I've worked with acting coaches, researched roles, and channeled different parts of myself. It's on a case-by-case for me, right now. — Zoe Kravitz

People say that they like the characters that they believe that I am. But, I don't as much. I like the characters that I believe that I am not. Like my role on 'Law and Order.' That character unnerved people. And I loved every second of it. I want to continue growing as an actress. There are ways that I can reach quicker, or deeper, with acting. — Jill Scott

I was attached to star in a project that was going to be an unbelievable character piece, to be showcased all over the world. It was everything I had been working toward and had suffered for. I had two months to prep and pretty much bankrupted myself in the process. A week before I was supposed to get on the plane, the whole project fell apart. Not only did it leave me completely broke and out of work, but I felt as if I had been betrayed by acting. Acting is not just something I love but a part of who I am. I was shattered. Thankfully, the love of those around me helped push me forward. — Jonathan Keltz

It's a trap I've fallen into earlier in my career - trying to be liked. Don't do it. When I watch TV and I see someone trying to make me like them, acting cute or quirky or goofy, I'm not impressed. Don't act like America's watching you. Just latch onto your character. Characters are flawed. Be unlikeable. Be flawed. Be a person. — Nathan Fillion

Again, of two who act cautiously, you shall find that one attains his end, the other not, and that two of different temperament, the one cautious, the other impetuous, are equally successful. All which happens from no other cause than that the character of the times accords or does not accord with their methods of acting. And hence it comes, as I have already said, that two operating differently arrive at the same result, and two operating similarly, the one succeeds and the other not. On this likewise depend the vicissitudes of Fortune. For if to one who conducts himself with caution and patience, time and circumstances are propitious, so that his method of acting is good, he goes on prospering; but if these change he is ruined, because he does not change his method of acting. — Niccolo Machiavelli

It was only when I started making short films in college and I was looking for girls to play the me-ish parts that I thought, Well, maybe I'm just going to try doing this myself before somebody else comes in and handles it. For a long time my acting was just a marriage of convenience between me and these characters that I was writing. — Lena Dunham

Character actor' is a technical term denoting a clever stage performer who cannot act, and therefore makes an elaborate study of the disguises and stage tricks by which acting can be grotesquely simulated. — George Bernard Shaw

I work with my acting coach to help me get into character and do pronunciation drills and tongue twisters to help me deliver lines. — Quvenzhane Wallis

Though I still turn up my coat-collar in a lonely way and am always looking at myself in mirrors, they're only habits and give no clue at all to my character, whatever that is. The most difficult performance in the world is acting naturally isn't it? Everything else is artful. — Angela Carter

When becoming a character, you have to steal. Steal whatever you see. You can even steal from other actors' characterizations; but if you do, only steal from the best. — Michael Caine

After much consideration, I am moving onward with a combination of disappointment at leaving behind a character I have loved playing for seven years and excitement of the new opportunities in acting and producing that lie ahead. — Lisa Edelstein

I remember playing with some friends and being aware that I was acting as I was playing with them - I would think of a character and pretend to be someone else. My parents also took me to ballet school, and there I think I was able to start communicating those feelings or emotions - I danced for so many years. — Penelope Cruz

I don't think my approach to acting is all necessarily in service of the character. I think, selfishly, I've put it in service of myself, my perspective on the world and helping my life. — Jake Gyllenhaal

I love acting ... I really do. I love crawling into another character's skin. That's something that I've always, always, always, always wanted. — Amanda Tapping

We're not one thing, as human beings, so any character that is written uni-dimensional, that's just a shallow character with shallow writing and shallow acting. — Kari Matchett

The "magic if" is a tool invented by Stanislavski, the father of acting craft, is to help an actor make appropriate choices. Essentially, the "magic if" refers to the answer to the question, "What would I do if I were this character in this situation?" Note that the question is not "What would I do if I were in this situation?" What you would do may be very different from what the character would do. Your job, based on your analysis of the script, the scene, and the given circumstances regarding the who of your character, is to decide what he or she would do. — Bruce Miller

With acting, you have to become someone else. That's the fun part of it for me - to step outside of yourself and become a character. I guess being Jimmy Cliff is a little bit of a character, too. — Jimmy Cliff

I don't know how to be like a Bill Murray or a Will Ferrell, these guys who know how to make a line funny just by, I don't know, some extra-sense perception. I only know character and emotion and real acting; that's all I know how to do. — John C. Reilly

When I was acting, I got trained in creating a character as a three-dimensional person. If you're doing it right you should be able to draw an audience into the character's world and make them feel their fears. — Tana French

The first step to a better audition is to give up character and use yourself. — Michael Shurtleff

In many ways, acting is really like a science to me to figure out the human behavior of any character that I'm playing. — Pauley Perrette

The trick to acting is not to show off; it's to think the thoughts of the character. I was lucky because when I started acting, it was doing jobs above pubs. I learned to act in anonymity, so by the time people saw me, I knew what I was doing. I was crap for years, but no one saw me being crap. It's a trade you learn. — Eddie Marsan

I try to allow the spirit of the character to live through me. That's the only way I know how to approach acting. I have to live it. — Ving Rhames

To me, acting is a matter of absolute concentration. You can laugh and giggle with your friends up to the minute the director says, "Action!" Then you snap your mind into shape and into the character that you're playing and relate to the people that you're acting with and forget everybody else that you've been joking with. — Elizabeth Taylor

Man, having an ideal before him of that which he ought to be, and is not, and acting as though he possessed the character he ought to have, but has not, comes, by the very virtue of his aspiration, to possess the character he imagines. — William Batchelder Greene

I love the chameleon nature of this business [acting]. I always have. Sometimes I'm not as recognizable as somebody else and I may not have gotten a role, but for me, acting is not a competition. I've just kept my head down and kept working, and had the great pleasure of working with some amazing people and playing some extraordinary and extreme characters. — Ray Stevenson

Years of live storytelling and character acting have helped me with building vivid locations and scenes. — David Crabb

That was the fun of acting, being a blank canvas you could transform into the character - Indian princess, 20s vamp, Mother Courage, Oxford don, 94-year-old wife. — Diana Quick

I'd had an early stint in acting school, and there was something satisfying about becoming a character, about being inside another mind that you had to create out of yourself. As I moved toward a life in writing, I found many of the things I'd learned in acting school still applied. — Michael Redhill

When you're actually feeling a character and you're going through the real emotions, and you're not fake acting, that energy stays with you and sometimes you can't get it off for days. It just resonates in your body, unless you have some sort of release, whatever it is. — Tinsel Korey

The thing I love about acting is that you can bring something very personal into the open and at the same time remain hidden because you're always playing a character in a story that someone else has imagined. You're always protected. — Ben Whishaw

I love the simplicity of Kevin Spacey's work. He really does a subtle interpretation of every character, and that's kind of my style of acting when it comes to dramatic roles. — Devon Bostick

I don't know how to play myself. I'm not interested enough in myself. That's just not how I was educated. That's not how I learned to become an actor. Acting is creating a character. — Corey Stoll

Each religion is a brave guess at the authorship of Hamlet. Yet, as far as the play goes does it make any difference whether Shakespeare or Bacon wrote it? Would it make any difference to the actors if their parts happened out of nothingness, if they found themselves acting on the stage because of some gross and unpardonable accident? Would it make any difference if the playwright gave them the lines or whether they composed them themselves, so long as the lines were properly spoken? Would it make any difference to the characters if A Midsummer Night's Dream was really a dream? — Lewis Mumford

Ralph Fiennes was a big hero of mine acting-wise growing up and while I was training. I just find him so watchable. He was playing this very intimidating character when we worked together and it certainly felt like he was in character off set as well! He was very cool. Before a scene, he'd be like, "Come on. Let's improvise. Let's just do stuff." But Jesus Christ. He's Ralph Fiennes! — Jeremy Irvine

That's what I love about acting, you get to find little pieces of yourself in every character you play. — Julianna Margulies

When I'm in the studio, I write the music, I play the different instruments, I produce it, I arrange it, and it's a self-indulgent exercise. It's the way I make my music. And when I'm acting, I get to leave myself behind, which is a relief. I get to collaborate with a director; I respect the director's medium and all the actors and actresses. So at the end of the day, it's about a character and it's about a director's vision. It's a really good balance for being so intense and alone in my personal process of making music. — Lenny Kravitz

The real challenge of acting for me, I suppose, is just getting to know a character very, very well and just applying what I know about them to every single scene. That's what it can be broken down to. — Daniel Radcliffe

It was a relief to inhabit someone else's life for a while, to get her personal issues for a brief respite. In a play, she knew exactly how all her character's problems would be resolved. No matter how the cast performed, the end turned out the same. No questions, no worries, no unknowns. — Alexandra Robbins

If you want to get into the business of doing voices for cartoons, you've got to be a good actor. It's all about acting. It's not about the voice. The voice is just one part of what you bring to the character. — Bob Bergen

Good acting is about reacting, not tryingto express something, but reacting to a situation as the character.I don't like acting acting. — Jim Jarmusch

I think it's critical in any character you play that it really is about reacting instead of acting. You can always tell when a person is acting. — Malin Akerman

I'm an actor; I have made my living by acting, and I almost think I owe it to the public to express my feelings and not as a character on a screen but as myself. — Kirk Douglas

There are certain things I learned when I first started learning about acting, to try and place the character physically and emotionally. And the way you place them emotionally is often with humor. — David Duchovny

While it is challenging working with a kid, because they're so of the moment all the time. My acting style is to try to take something from my life that the character can relate to and that I can relate the character to. — Kyra Sedgwick

There were time when I was into method acting that I did have moments of residual character emotions, because the method bases your emotional responses as a character on emotional experiences from your real life. — Corin Nemec

When you write a character and their dialogue, you can't help imagining how you would be acting if you were them. You kind of have to relate to all of them. It's the most personal thing I've ever done. — Tom Ford

When it comes to acting, it's about creating a character and bringing forth a director's vision. It's a weird feeling, because with acting, it's just not about me. I love being in that position, because with the music, it's always about me. — Lenny Kravitz

I didn't really want to be an actor when I was growing up - I wanted to be whatever I was reading about or seeing at the time. When I read The Firm I wanted to be a lawyer; when I saw Top Gun, I wanted to be a fighter pilot. So that's why acting probably turned out to be a good thing for me because I get to be people for five minutes or 90 minutes. I'd be curious to see if I had the attention span to be like those guys on 30 Rock and play the same character season after season, — Jason Sudeikis

It was great for that to be my first movie with such a wonderful cast, and such a huge movie. And now I get to do The Fighting Temptations, which is coming out soon-it wasn't much of a character, it was more of a real person, so I got to show more of my acting range. — Beyonce Knowles

When I'm playing a character, I am never allowed to explicitly state the the takeaway message of the scenes I'm performing - after all, part of the dramatic conflict is that the person I'm portraying doesn't really know it yet. — Lena Dunham

I've always remembered something Sanford Meisner, my acting teacher, told us. When you create a character, it's like making a chair, except instead of making someting out of wood, you make it out of yourself. That's the actor's craft - using yourself to create a character. — Robert Duvall

The toughest part of acting is never a single thing. It's more like a whole character. I find film really difficult - trying to make it feel like a consistent character when you're filming everything out of order. — Carey Mulligan

Acting is not that far from mental disease: An actor works on splitting his character into others. It is like a kind of schizophrenia. — Vittorio Gassman

I think theatre is by far the most rewarding experience for an actor. You get 4 weeks to rehearse your character and then at 7:30 pm you start acting and nobody stops you, acting with your entire soul. — Christopher Eccleston

The character I play in Star Quality says acting is the be-all and end-all of her life. I'm not like that. I do enjoy working and I give every job my best shot but I never feel, What on Earth am I going to do now? — Penelope Keith

People often say that an actor 'plays' a character well, but that's an amateurish notion. Developing a characterization is not merely a matter of putting on makeup and a costume and stuffing Kleenex in your mouth. That's what actors used to do, and then called it a characterization. In acting everything comes out of what you are, or some aspect of who you are. — Marlon Brando