Acting In Movies Quotes & Sayings

A huge part of acting in movies is appetite. You do your best work when you've got a lot of appetite and you really want to embrace something. When you get tired, you don't have that hunger. — Clive Owen

For me, the real goal is to integrate. The thing that I'm most happy with is the fact that I've been able to keep doing all of it - to keep writing, and to keep acting in movies, and to keep acting on the stage, to keep directing plays. I find that they feed each other, and that I learn about acting from directing and I learn about writing from acting. — Ethan Hawke

When I first started acting in movies - as probably a lot of naive young actors do - I made a list of directors that I wanted to work with and sent it to my agent at the time. — Justin Bartha

Arnaud Desplechin invented me as an actor. I never imagined I'd be acting in movies. — Mathieu Amalric

I've always been in the middle of making my own movies, so taking acting jobs that take me away from that has been impossible. — Albert Brooks

In films, you are a commodity. You are a look, something that the camera really likes, something that has struck an audience in a certain way. It's not really so much about transforming yourself the way actors do onstage. I think there's a difference between the skill of acting in movies and onstage. — Brooke Adams

My father and I used to watch movies all the time. That was our bonding time, so that's when I kind of fell in love with acting. — Jessica Barth

My wife says that stage acting is like being on a tightrope with no net, and being in the movies, there is a net - because you stop and go over it again. It's very technical and mechanical. On stage you're on your own. — Eli Wallach

Acting is not a science. Anybody who believes that their success exists in relation to their goals is deluding themselves; unless you think of a career in terms of financial goals. I have nothing against Tom Cruise, but he must have a large capacity to deal with the business side of movies. — Val Kilmer

TV stars are cool. Even if their characters are less than admirable, they come across as somehow sympathetic, maybe even neighborly. They are, after all, people you invite into your home every week. If you don't like them, you won't watch them.

Movie stars, by contrast, are hot. They have to blaze so fiercely that they fill a screen forty feet high and demand the attention of a crowded theater.

That's why very few TV stars have graduated successfully to features. It requires not only different skills but a different personality. You have to go from amiable to commanding.

Likewise, some movie stars are simply too big for television. Jack Nicholson is riveting on-screen, but you wouldn't want him in your living room week after week. The television simply couldn't contain his personality. — Walter Jon Williams

I fell in love with acting at a very young age, when I was 9 years old and started doing community theater. As far as wanting to make a profession out of it, I was about 13 or 14. When I first saw Indiana Jones in "Raiders of the Lost Ark", when I saw Harrison Ford, I knew I wanted to be in movies. — Guy Wilson

Well, acting has been a dream of mine since I can remember; being in the movies and acting, having those experiences. — Chris Klein

I was doing community theater, and I was always interested in acting, but I was also interested in sports. I was interested in a lot of things. I was a pretty normal guy. I wasn't like a guy who grew up in a dark theater watching movies. — Willem Dafoe

So much of movie acting is in the lighting. And in loving your characters. I try to know them, and with that intimacy comes love. And now, I love Voldemort. — Ralph Fiennes

Being the youngest, I constantly have that insecurity of being the youngest, which ultimately is probably my drive. in a lot of ways. In terms of as an artist, the way we could communicate as a family very clearly was through movies and through acting, and when things became complicated with all of our own personalities, that's where we are most clear. I think that's also where we are most brutal with each other as well. — Jake Gyllenhaal

I think I have always tried to do the smaller films. I like to jump around and there is something really nice for acting in a smaller film. But I think now, Hollywood's movies certainly involve a younger generation for the most part and so ... I love going back and forth. — Sigourney Weaver

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

I got it into my head that I was going to be starring in movies that I wrote, so that's what I did. I stopped acting in all things, and I wrote my first script, which was optioned a week after I finished it. — Larry Bishop

The most important thing to having a long career, as an actor, is diversity and being able to play different types of characters in different types of movies. I want to keep acting, all my life. In order to do that, I think it is important to go and do the bigger tentpole box office movies, and then also do more character roles. — Josh Hutcherson

I spent a long time working in the movies to figure out that kind of acting and also how to write and produce for the screen. — Denis Leary

But actually my dad is a very talented director and not just his use of shots and camera, but he's very good with actors and he knows acting well. It's great to see him do that and be really good at it and he's been doing it for a while and he certainly knows how to make movies, and little movies I guess for a television show, and he's going to come back in November to direct a second episode, which I'm really excited about. — Emily Deschanel

I took an acting class with Louise Lasser, Woody Allen's first wife and co-star in many movies. I've done some other indie films, if you look on the YouTube. I love acting - it's great. — Gary Shteyngart

To be honest, I don't see myself acting forever. I just can't imagine myself being a 70-year-old man fighting for roles. I would love to do small parts in my friends' movies or things that I'm directing myself. I do envision myself behind the camera as I get a little bit older. — Dave Franco

I miss you more than Michael Bay missed the mark
When he made Pearl Harbor.
I miss you more than that movie missed the point
And that's an awful lot, girl.
And now, now you've gone away
And all I'm trying to say, is:
Pearl Harbor sucked and I miss you.
I need you like Ben Affleck needs acting school
He was terrible in that film.
I need you like Cuba Gooding needed a bigger part
He's way better than Ben Affleck.
And now, all I can think about is your smile
and that shitty movie, too.
Pearl Harbor sucked and I miss you.
Why does Michael Bay get to keep on making movies?
I guess Pearl Harbor sucked
just a little bit more than I miss you. — Trey Parker

I know if I wasn't making music and acting, I would be involved in the performing arts world in some way. I would be either writing and making music for other artists or producing movies. — Claudia Lee

The only really good thing about acting in movies is that there's no heavy lifting. — Cary Grant

Directing takes a lot longer than acting. This was about seven years in development, and then two and a half years with pre-production, production, post and now the release. Not that I have people banging on my door to star in movies, but it takes me out of the acting game for a longer chunk of time. — David Schwimmer

You know I grew up on the Batman movies, and they had some terrific actors in, but you know a lot of the other ones - it wasn't always the case that you had people the caliber of Jeff Bridges or Robert Downey, so to kind of show up and work with Jeremy Renner or Robert or with Mark Ruffalo, any of them, Chris Evans, Chris Hemsworth, the caliber of people you're acting with, to me, is really fun. From the first day I started doing scenes with Robert, it's been one of the funnest experiences I've ever had. — Clark Gregg

Writing keeps my mind occupied during the down time in my acting career. Even when I am working, there are times when I have multiple days off each week. Also, the writing allows me to 'do' movies that I would never do as an actor. — Conan Stevens

As the acting class was going on, I just realized I just knew more about cinema than the other people in the class. I cared about cinema and they cared about themselves. But two, was actually at a certain point I just realized that I love movies too much to simply appear in them. I wanted the movies to be my movies. — Quentin Tarantino

I've always loved movies but everyone loves movies, so I never conceived of the fact that I could actually be in them. In high school I had some friends in the drama department, but they were just doing plays, and I was like, "Eh, I don't really think that that's me." So I just played sports. Then, a bunch of years later, I'm acting. — Channing Tatum

I would just say that I could share what served me, which was trying to find the best material that I could possibly find and make it better. When other celebrities and sports stars, or people that are successful in another area, cross over into movies, they're always encouraged to bring that same tenacity and that same relentless drive that you had to make it. You have to apply that to acting. — Dwayne Johnson

Music has always been something I wanted to do. I think just the idea of performing and entertaining and being in the studio is really what I wanted to know how that felt. I started to get into it around the same time I got into acting, but it turned into a side project because my movies were taking up most of my time. — Hailee Steinfeld

For better or worse, I take my acting seriously. I may not have been in the best movies ever made, but I take it deathly serious, and I love being an actor. — Matthew Lillard

I like producing but acting is the quintessential me, and I'm probably better at that than I am at anything. My heart has always been in the movies. — Morgan Freeman

I don't want to do only movies that I'm in. I definitely want to start to branch out and do TV and stuff that I'm not in and really make a good run at it as a production. I'm probably going to take a break from acting after a little while because I've enjoyed the developmental process so much. It helps you as an actor to learn story and to learn how to really nurture a script and work with a writer so you're not sitting there having to write it yourself and give notes. — Channing Tatum

There is probably some great acting that goes on in movies from people who have never been on a stage, but if you are in for the long haul, you'd be missing an enormous part of what being an actor is if you're not part of theater. — Justin Kirk

I'm definitely interested in doing movies. I've always focused more on acting than singing because that's where my true passion lies. — Melissa Benoist

Well, I've been acting for 50 years now, professionally. I've been acting a lot longer. My mother reckons I was acting when I got out of the womb. But because I've been working in the theater, I've probably only done about 25 movies but I've done more than 100 plays. — Jacki Weaver

Acting is a bit like being an athlete. You spend all your time getting ready to do something for two minutes. All the things that made my career in the movies happen took two or three minutes, which is the time that it takes for a 'take'. In that time, something happens. That's what people know you for, just like someone running the hundred metres. — Christopher Walken

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

I make movies for grownups. When Hollywood starts making them again, I'll start acting in them again. — Lee Remick

I loved acting, and then acting led to writing, and writing led to directing, and directing lead to five movies, and I feel like the luckiest guy in the world. — Tom McCarthy

When my turn on the program comes, I am not nervous at all - because all this is happening out of time, out of space. I am, for a moment, a figure of my own fantasy, and I play my appointed role as if I were in the movies. — Eva Hoffman

My movies are unadorned, they're not particularly fancy, I think they're kind of workmanlike in some ways, focusing on the writing and the acting. — Ben Affleck

Keanu Reeves?" she asks in amazement. I nod. "What did he wish for?" "Isn't it obvious?" I say, waving a hand at the screen. "Fame." "That's why he's famous? Because of a wish?" "Have you seen his movies? Surely you didn't think he made it on his acting skills?" I grant wishes; I don't work miracles. Viola looks back at the screen, eyes screwed up in awe. "I guess that makes sense," she says faintly as my former master delivers a line poorly. "Wow. — Jackson Pearce

If you're with one person, then you don't have to meet other people. It's like when you're acting in a movie, you don't have to audition for other movies. I prefer that. — Greta Gerwig

After Bottle Rocket, I started getting acting work. People started offering me roles in movies. It wasn't something that I thought about as a kid growing up in Texas. Actually, maybe I would have thought of it as a possibility, but it seemed so crazily far-fetched to think that you could work in movies that I really didn't ever quite imagine it. It was just lucky. — Owen Wilson

I started as an actor, then became a theater director. I loved acting but didn't feel as confident as I needed to be, so I started directing theater; then I played in some movies, and then I felt the need to do my own stuff. — Baltasar Kormakur

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 a kid, I was a huge fan of movies and acting. My mom was in the sort of community theater, and I always hung around down there, and I was a massive fan of everything I'm kind of involved in now. But fairly ordinary and cheeky. — Simon Pegg

I'm just about the movies; I enjoy the dexterity of actors in action movies and the choreography side of things. You've just got to be a different person to be a professional fighter. I train with professional fighters, so I know what it takes. It's a very difficult profession, probably harder then the acting profession. — Scott Adkins

When I was an actor in some movies a long time ago, I was so curious about all the camera movements - why is the camera placed here, and why does it move like this? And why the set and the background, the color? It's a lot of questions for me to ask, because I was so interested, not only in acting, but also the whole process of filmmaking. — Stephen Chow

I've been blessed to have acting opportunities in movies, television, as well as Broadway, and definitely want to continue to do so. — Nick Jonas

One of the reasons I became a writer is that, unlike starting a band, directing movies, or acting in a theatrical production, you can do it alone. Your success and failure depend entirely on yourself. — Neil Strauss

Looking at acting, in the movies or the theater, and the way I like to look at it, it's just an extension of childhood play ... Kids play and imagine in a very intense fashion and they don't need any director telling them, 'You really have to believe in it.' They believe in it completely. — Viggo Mortensen

I took acting classes in college, and once I graduated, I decided to give acting a shot when I couldn't really think of anything else to do. It took me a couple of years to get an agent, and my first big break was The Fanelli Boys, which was a sitcom on NBC. Then I did a few television movies. — Christopher Meloni

That's a big responsibility, and the details obsess me. And, also, I no longer feel I have to do the Tonight Show every time I open my mouth. Twenty years ago, I told myself I'd rather direct than act, and it's taken me this long. You lose your passion in acting. You make too many mistakes. Maybe that's why I make so many movies; if you don't like this one, another one's opening on Tuesday. But then I spent six months of my life on 'At Long Last Love,' a picture nobody saw. I enjoyed making it, I learned from it, I grew, but that's too much time out of my life. — Burt Reynolds

Hopefully we'll get to a point where there are absolutely no restrictions on any kind of violence in movies. I'd love to see us get to a point where you can go to theaters and see movies unrated and that people know its not real violence. It's all pretend. It's all fake. It's just acting. It's just magic tricks. — Eli Roth

Before I even knew what that half of my family did, I was interested in performing. I remember being seven years old and up on a stage and loving it. I've always adored it. Not just acting, but the whole process of writing and directing movies, everything that has to do with that part of life. Maybe it's in my blood. — Jack Huston

Don't you fall for the big hearts and flowers, acting like it's the movies. Bunch of bullshit, he said. Pardon me. You want the guy who'll get your medicine in the middle of the night, even in a blizzard, even after twenty years. You want the guy who shows you every day, shoveling the walk, carrying your groceries, shows you how much he loves you. It's not about talking the talk, Eva. You must have met my father, I said. — Amy Bloom

I'm lucky that I got to start acting when I was so young, and people put me in these movies. A lot of people don't get to play these parts because they start a little older. — Nat Wolff

Where do babies come from? Don't bother asking adults. They lie like pigs. However, diligent independent research and hours of playground consultation have yielded fruitful, if tentative, results. There are several theories. Near as we can figure out, it has something to do with acting ridiculous in the dark. We believe it is similar to dogs when they act peculiar and ride each other. This is called "making love". Careful study of popular song lyrics, advertising catch-lines, TV sitcoms, movies, and T-Shirt inscriptions offers us significant clues as to its nature. Apparently it makes grown-ups insipid and insane. Some graffiti was once observed that said "sex is good". All available evidence, however, points to the contrary. — Matt Groening

I think that, in the beginning, you think, 'I want to be the biggest movie star in the world.' And then, with the more movies you make, you are like, 'I don't know if I want to be that anymore. I think what I am looking for is something different.' I like acting, but a lot of times, stardom comes with a lot of strings attached. — Chris Evans

I enjoyed being in movies when I was a boy. As a child you're not acting - you believe. — Roddy McDowall

I love acting; I love movie sets and movies, but, at the same time, there's something about the position of women in that world that frightens me a lot. I find it nearly inhuman to be an actress. — Lou Doillon

When I was a kid, I was into psychological thrillers. When I was 12, my favorite movie was 'Thirteen.' I just really liked movies that showed an extreme range in acting. That's what made me want to become an actress. — Leven Rambin

You can't think about how people will perceive you or your character. All you can do is focus on your work. The rest is up to the universe. I've been acting for 16 years. I've done 55 movies and, in all seriousness, there's maybe five that are good and the rest are crap. — Robert Patrick

I think that Mos Def is the best actor, but when you talk about rappers in films, I don't really think the quality of the acting is most important because most rappers are put in movies because of the personality and people want to see that. — Morris Chestnut

I took my acting very seriously. I did over 40 films, and naturally, some of them were called B-movies because the woman was at the top of the billing. Women couldn't star in their own movies. — Mamie Van Doren

I think the best roles are in dark movies. It's roles that aren't you. It's fun playing someone that's not me. If I'm playing me all the time, then it's not acting. It's just being yourself. — Chloe Grace Moretz

You know, when I first went into the movies Lionel Barrymore played my grandfather. Later he played my father and finally he played my husband. If he had lived I'm sure I would have played his mother. That's the way it is in Hollywood. The men get younger and the women get older. — Lillian Gish

Every film by Will Smith, Harry Belafonte, Sidney Poitier, Lena Horne, Ruby Dee, Don Cheadle will have great acting and carry good messages in the film. The films starring those actors are the films I tell young people to watch for good acting and to view for quality movies. — Brian J. White

I came up around people who took acting seriously, who cared about acting, cared about the theater and, in the '70s, made movies that said something that mattered. I came up with those people, and I was a kid. Their ethos and credo became mine. — Laurence Fishburne

Why did people fall in love?he wondered as he watched Rock and Doris pretend to do just that. Obviously, it made people ridiculous and not just in movies from the sixties. There had to be some basis in real life or no one would ever have made a silly comedy about love. Yeah, there were also movies about love that weren't comedies, but in those movies people acted ridiculous for a while and then someone announced the were going to die, or they had to go off to war, or oops I forgot to mention my wife. People stopped acting ridiculous and starting acting really serious and sad, sad because the ridiculous part was over. How could people want this foolishness in their lives? — Marshall Thornton

I felt a gravitational pull to the material so that there's a certain element of acting that's not really necessary. I've really liked this in foreign movies before or I've observed others working with them and I've noticed that there's a method that goes on where the actors try and get the children, like the child actor, to interact with them in a real way. It seems like you're the adult trying to get the kid to fall in love with him. — Brendan Fraser

Out of perverseness, I jumped on the subway and went down to a sound stage on Fourth Street to watch the shooting of Kay Doubleday's big strip scene in Mad Dog Coll, a gangster film that can still, to my embarrassment, be seen occasionally on late-night TV... Kay Doubleday was in my class at Lee Strasberg's; it was in the interest of art, I told myself, to watch her prance down a ramp, singing and stripping her heart out. — Brooke Hayward

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

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

I guess I was a child actor. Acting was one of the things I did alongside going to school: I'd be playing guitar, I'd be playing soccer, and I would be acting in movies. — Michiel Huisman

You can't teach anyone. You can't tell anyone. That's the thing you have to sit down and experience in order for it to mean anything. You can't intellectualize it. It's like why movies are cool. It's a combination of pictures and design and acting and music can create an experience that is outside of the experience that you can actually have in reality, which gets to my motion picture philosophy. People are like, 'aren't you trying to make the movies as real as you can?' — Zack Snyder

You have to understand that crew members make movies so they're seeing a lot of actors all the time in their career acting. — Philip Seymour Hoffman

Usually, those people don't even like actors and they can't wait until they get in the cutting room. They kind of break down in categories: directors who like to be surprised and some of them abhor being surprised. As far as directing, we all direct when we're acting in movies ... every single one of us. — Dustin Hoffman

In his apology, Arnold Schwarzenegger said he was sorry to the women that he groped, and he admitted that he had acted badly. Not only that, Arnold then apologized for acting badly in all of his movies. — Conan O'Brien

Originally, I started acting because I showed interest in movies and TV. — Gage Munroe

Personally I like the slow burn; I don't think there is anything wrong with it. When I think about the movies that were most effective on me as a viewer I think of the original Haunting and the Exorcist, Rosemary's Baby, the Sixth Sense, the Others. These movies are not over the top at all, they are movies that rely on good story telling, good acting, good premise, good exposition and I want to stay true to that in future projects. — Oren Peli

Some actors get by with behaving, not acting. You've got to sell the effect. I act more in the 'Nightmare' movies because it's not like me. I'm acting, not reacting. — Robert Englund

I don't have that drive to be in this field, climbing up, doing bit parts in movies to make a big movie. But I'm lucky I get to also do acting - it's fun. I should probably just take an acting class on the weekends - that would be enough for me. — Jemima Kirke

I love movies, I've always been interested in them, but I wanted to wait for the right time to start acting. — Claudia Schiffer

For so many years, I've been an actor acting in other people's movies, and in 'Unstoppable,' I'm producing it, and I have an opportunity to create some of that excitement with style and form and different color templates and things like that. So, as an artist, it's really exciting. — Kirk Cameron

My life is about politics, a lot of about music, and a lot about things other than acting. I like traveling the world. But, what makes me want to stay in this business and keep doing this are movies when it's a true labor of love. — Olivia Wilde

I think that in big-budget movies there's a lot of other stuff going on besides acting, like special effects. — Rachel Weisz

I don't work in movies and TV because I adore acting, it's because I adore movies and TV. — Jay Baruchel

When you look at the early-'30s movies, like King Kong, the codes of acting are very similar to those of silent movies. In some of the silent movies - the good ones, the ones done by the best directors - the acting is very, very natural. — Michel Hazanavicius

My background is in largely in theatre and acting. I grew up in a town with a well-respected Shakespeare Festival, and I fell in with some kids whose parents worked there. We staged all-kid versions of 'Hamlet', 'Cymbeline', a few others. All the while, I was making short films; monster movies, slapstick comedies, claymation. — Matt Ross

A person has all sorts of lags built into him Kesey is saying. Once the most basic is the sensory lag the lag between the time your senses receive something and you are able to react. One-thirtieth of a second is the time it takes if you are the most alert person alive and most people are a lot slower than that ... You can't go any faster than that ... We are all doomed to spend the rest of our lives watching a movies of our lives - we are always acting on what has just finished happening. It happened at least 1 30th of a second ago. We think we are in the present but we aren't. The present we know is only a movies of the past and we will really never be able to control the present through ordinary means. — Tom Wolfe

I really prefer acting in the theater the most. In some ways TV is closer to that because there's more of a regularity to the schedule. You have to finish an episode by a certain day. Movies can just go on interminably. — Mary-Louise Parker

I love the Elvis movies. I used to watch them. In every single one of his movies he wasn't acting as a car salesman - he was acting as a car salesman who loved to play guitar. — Larry Mullen Jr.

I think acting is only one part of the piece of the movie. I'ts an important piece, but I'd like to be involved in all the other aspects of making movies. — Stephen Dorff

My metaphor for acting in movies - not on stage because it's completely different on stage - is to put colors on an easel for the director to paint his own painting with in the editing room, long after I've left. You buy me for red and black, so I better give you really great red and black, but if I can give you purple, pink, green and brown too, I will. — Scott Glenn