Quotes & Sayings About Acting Like Someone Else

All I have to do is be me on stage. But acting, I have to be someone else, and walk how they would walk and blink how they would blink. I used to talk about it bad like, 'Aw man, that person made $10 million a movie?' But now I understand why they do. I get it now. — Jill Scott

Movie stars are insecure like everyone else. That's why they go into acting! — Penny Marshall

He turned the haggered, haunted face on her and said, "I want you to stop it."
"Whatever you're doing ... to try to make me like Pilar, it has to stop. Because it's not fair to her. She's upset right now because I'm acting crazy. But I don't want to be with her. It's you I love. And if you want to get rid of me, then tell me, but don't try to foist me off on somebody else. — L.J.Smith

When I was in high school, I had already kind of been working in the industry and had done a couple of acting jobs. There were definitely some girls that were either jealous or thought I was a snob. I was just trying to be a teenage girl and go to high school and have fun like everybody else! — Jillian Rose Reed

Singing is like going to a party at someone else's house. Acting is like having the party at your house. — Cher

You can't keep acting like this," Lillian says, and for the first time in months, it's like she's actually trying to be nice. "Tragedy isn't this evil thing that came from outer space. It's just there, you know. Along with everything else. — Brenna Yovanoff

Anyone can face ease and success with confidence. It is the way we face trouble and misfortune that defines us. Self-pity goes with selfishness, and there is nothing more to be deplored in a leader than that. Selfishness belongs to children, and to halfwits. A great leader puts others before himself. You would be surprised how acting so makes it easier to bear one's own troubles. In order to act like a king, one need only treat everyone else like one. — Joe Abercrombie

People with dissociative disorders are like actors trapped in a variety of roles. They have difficulty integrating their memories, their sense of identity and aspects of their consciousness into a continuous whole. They find many parts of their experience alien, as if belonging to someone else. They cannot remember or make sense of parts of their past. — David Speigel

Stressful situations cause alterations in behavior that reveal true character, Tibbs. If a person gradually begins acting like someone else altogether, you may very well find that they *are* someone else altogether" -Inspector Percival Pensive — Jessica Lawson

So I hope to stretch my acting skills. I got to a point in my dancing where I felt like I did so much hard work and I achieved a lot of great things, and I wanted to try something else and put that same kind of commitment that I did into my dancing into something that I was also passionate about. I had so many opportunities with my dance and now I'm just excited to get better as an actress. — Julianne Hough

I am a deeply uncertain individual. I often find myself acting like a fool to make the people around me laugh. When they're laughing, they're not watching me quite as closely. I smile to put people at ease. But what if I opened my mouth one day, spoke my actual thoughts, and the people glared at my opinions? What if they thought me disgusting or frightening or ugly because of my words? Would you keep your lips shut for the rest of your life to not face that judgment? Just for the sake of someone else's comfort? For these strangers, who I will never know? If I can't speak then I'll write. These strangers, whose opinions crush me, will be forced to listen. Because when they read my words those words will make a home within their heads. They may even end up using my own opinions against me. But at least I'll be hidden behind the pages of a book. — F.K. Preston

A lot of parents tell their children that if they want to be an actor, that's fine, but they should do something else first, so they've got something to fall back on. It doesn't work like that, as far as I'm concerned. — Ewan McGregor

Really, acting is like anything else. The more time you put in, the more you learn and the more you can give back to the industry. — Kris Holden-Ried

Honestly, as hard a profession as acting is, I think music is even harder. Acting, you're like a leech, because someone else does the hard part for you. They write it for you, then the director tells you what to do. You really just need to know how to pay attention, follow instructions. — Michael Shannon

When you're playing the part of a saxophone or a trumpet player, both of which I have done, it would be nice to be able to play like John Coltrane, but you can't. Your job is to do something else. And I'm not sure what it is, but I don't think I'd be acting Niels Bohr any better if I went and studied physics for five years. — Stephen Rea

For me, acting in scenes with other people is like playing soccer with a bunch of legless five year olds. It's not really fair to them, but what else can I do, you know? — Zach Braff

I'm always open to somebody else having a better idea, but I feel like, if it feels real, then people aren't thinking about it and they're just doing the acting of it. — Anne Fletcher

I like acting better than anything else, but, you know, directing's good. — Tommy Wiseau

I can act. I've been acting for a long time, but like anything else, don't nobody owe you nothing. You've go to pay your dues. You go from A to Z; you don't go from M to Z. — Bernie Mac

Specific parts of you personality may be angry and are usually easily evoked. because these parts are dissociated, anger remains an emotion that is not integrated for you as a whole person. Even though individuals with dissociative disorder are responsible for their behavior, just like everyone else, regardless of which part may be acting, they may feel little control of these raging parts of themselves.
Some dissociative parts may avoid or even be phobic of anger. They may influence you as a whole person to avoid conflict with others at any cost or to avoid setting healthy boundaries out of fear of someone else's anger; or they may urge you to withdraw from others almost completely. — Suzette Boon

Apparently, now and again adults take the time to sit down and contemplate what a disaster their life is. They complain without understanding and, like flies constantly banging against the same old windowpane, they buzz around, suffer, waste away, get depressed then wonder how they got caught up in this spiral that is taking them where they don't want to go.
The most intelligent among them turn their malaise into a religion: oh, the despicable vacuousness of bourgeois existence! Cynics of this kind frequently dine at Papa's table: "What has become of the dreams of our youth?" they ask, with a smug, disillusioned air. "Those years are long gone, and life's a bitch."
I despise this false lucidity that comes with age. The truth is that they are just like everyone else: nothing more than kids without a clue about what has happened to them, acting big and tough when in fact all they want is to burst into tears. — Muriel Barbery

With acting, I'm taking somebody else's work and interpreting it. Whereas with music, it's organic. It's completely myself. Nobody else is really involved with the beginning stages of it. Art is something that I haven't really put out to the public. There's a couple pictures on MySpace, but I haven't done a gallery opening or anything like that. Art is very personal to me. I haven't really shared it with too many people. — Tinsel Korey

You have to love what you do, and you have to need it like you need air. And there's nothing else that would give me the same degree of satisfaction as acting, which is why I can't walk away from it. — Wentworth Miller

I would just like to be able to give to people through acting. If I can entertain people by being somebody else and allow somebody to feel something, then that makes me feel good. — Melanie Griffith

Go learn the language. Go take some acting lessons. Start from zero like everybody else. — Roselyn Sanchez

Musicals are good times. I live to do a musical, there's nothing like it, no experience like that in the movie business. You don't get to pull all those triggers at the same time doing anything else. Nothing pulls that from you. Dancing, acting and singing is like "Alright, I gotta fire on all cylinders right now" because that's what it requires. It's fun getting to exercise all those muscles. — Queen Latifah

The thing I like about acting is being able to lose yourself completely in someone else. — Ellen Page

I always have to pretend I'm somebody else to give the best performance. It kind of feels like I'm acting; it's definitely an exaggerated version of me. I'm a very normal, down-to-earth person, but I wanted the videos to be striking, so I have to lay it on a little bit. — Jessie Ware

I used to think truth was eternal, that once I knew, once I saw, it would be with me forever, a constant by which everything else could be measured. I know now that this isn't so, that most truths are inherently unretainable, that we have to work hard all our lives to remember the most basic things. Society is no help. It tells us again and again that we can most be ourselves by acting and looking like someone else ... — Lucy Grealy

I didn't intend to even become an actor. I was studying fashion, and I think acting just happened by chance. It really felt more like I was watching a movie from outside, like it was happening to someone else. It's been a great journey so far. — Sonakshi Sinha

I'm sick of you all acting like I'm this English freak raining on your little math-science parade. Sung seems to think my contribution to this team is a little less than everyone else's."
"Anyone can memorize book titles!" Sung shouted. "Oh, please.Like I care what you think? You don't even know the difference between Keats and Byron. — Holly Black

For modeling, I was always creating characters. I dress like a tomboy. So, when I'd go into a shoot, there'd be all these dresses, and I'd say to myself, 'Okay, this isn't me. It's somebody else. So, who is this person?' Acting is the next level of that. — Agyness Deyn

Your name will be in a history book one day, and some bored ten-year-old will memorize it for a test and then forget all about you. You have a job, just like everyone in the world. Stop acting like it makes you more or less than anyone else. — Kiera Cass

I've learned to get really good at this - say one thing when I'm thinking about something else, act like I'm listening when I'm not, pretend to be calm and happy when I'm really freaking out. It's one of the skills you perfect as you get older — Lauren Oliver

Animation is a fascinating area from an acting point of view because it's not really like anything else because you are only providing a portion of the performance. That's very inspiring and it forces you to do things in a different way - to tell stories through your voice. — David Tennant

Privileged groups, like everyone else, want to think well of themselves and to believe that they are acting generously and justly. — Joanna Russ

Invitations not obligations: Our expectations of other people can be a big drain on our emotions. When we ask someone to do something, or, worse, have a belief that someone should do something and insist that he or she comply, it places a great stress on us. And the other person, noting our anxiety and insistence that they conform to our expectations, may actually become less inclined to respond as we like.
Instead, consider everything you want someone else to do to be an invitation that the other person may or may not choose to accept. Of course, if you are an employer or a parent who is trying to ensure a child's safety, you must have parameters and ground rules. Everyone else, however, should be released from the obligation of doing, being, living, and acting as you feel they should. — Will Bowen

You're not going to be able to look like anyone else, no matter how hard you try, unless you're a mimic, then you're not acting, you're just mimicking. You can't go on being John Wayne, that's John Wayne. So you're not going to steal from John Wayne. I'm not going to steal from John Wayne and you're not going to come back and say 'Didn't you get that from the circus?' You know. But he is one of those people who instructs me, whom I look up to - whom I think is one of the masters of his craft that I am so enamoured of. — Morgan Freeman

I like acting because I get to find different parts of myself, or at least create different parts that don't already exist, and see the world through someone else's eyes. — Bex Taylor-Klaus

As human beings, we aren't as individual as we'd like to believe we are. And I think that's what makes acting possible. Despite the fact that I have not experienced something, I have it in my human capacity to imagine it and to put myself in someone else's shoes, and to take someone else's circumstances personally. — Lupita Nyong'o

There is a class system in acting just like in anything else. Black females fall in a category below black male actors. — Debra Wilson

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

Acting classes, I guess, are good and I would like to maybe sometime take one. But I would feel like I was learning someone else's technique. I like mine. — Frankie Muniz

Music means freedom to me. But in acting you can pretend to be someone else and I like that. — Robert Pattinson

MOST PEOPLE think acting is make-believe. Like it's a big game where people put on costumes and feign kisses or stab wounds and then pretend to gasp and die. They think it's a show. They don't understand that acting is becoming someone else, changing your thoughts and needs until you don't remember your own anymore. You let the other person invade everything you are and then you turn yourself inside out, spilling their identity onto the stage like a kind of bloodletting. — Mindy Mejia

That's what got her, of course. That everyone thought it so unbelievable that she could possibly attract a man like him. It shouldn't upset her because it was true. She couldn't. Not in this world, in this lifetime. Yet she didn't appreciated everyone else acting as if they were the most improbable twosome since Quasimodo hit on Esmeralda. — Jo Leigh

Blessed be the inventor of photography! I set him above even the inventor of chloroform! It has given more positive pleasure to poor suffering humanity than anything else that has 'cast up' in my time or is like to
this art by which even the 'poor' can possess themselves of tolerable likenesses of their absent dear ones. And mustn't it be acting favorably on the morality of the country? — Jane Welsh Carlyle

You name it and I've done it. I'd like to say I did it my way. But that line, I'm afraid, belongs to someone else. — Sammy Davis Jr.

I'll always have acting. But then if I had to choose something else it'd probably be singing or dancing - if I had to. Or maybe, like, designer, like sketching designs. — Elle Fanning

I'd definitely like to study other things and keep on learning all the time, but I wouldn't want to do anything else. Ultimately, acting is my craft. I've always been interested in psychology and nutrition, but I don't know that I'd go and make that my profession. — Cindy Busby

Every time the phone rang, my heart jumped. Was it Alexander? And when it wasn't him my heart would break into a million pieces. It had been two longs days since I had seen my Gothic mate. I was so preoccupied with Alexander, dreaming of the next time we'd be together, nothing else mattered. I didn't wash the spot where his tender love lips had pressed against my flesh. I was acting like I was straight out of a Gidget movie! What had happened to me? I was losing my edge! For the first time in my life I was really afraid. Afraid of never seeing him again and afraid of being rejected. — Ellen Schreiber

I was like the class clown in school so I guess I would say I did like the attention. In church I did a lot of plays, my mother made me play characters, do a lot of drama and acting, trying to become someone else. So it helped me create who I am, to create Snoop Dogg. — Snoop Dogg

I was really into films when I was younger, but I feel like a bit of a phony sometimes - I started acting because I didn't know what else to do. I filled in all these university application forms and honestly didn't want to do any of the courses. — Aidan Turner

Doing 'All Good Things' really felt like I was acting for myself rather than anyone else. It gave me a freedom I'd never had before, or knew I had, to do whatever I want to, and to argue my opinions and not just feel like the cute girl on set or the girl in a boy's club. I figured out how I could be both. And it's been different ever since. — Kirsten Dunst

I like the fact that I can go away and lose myself so I don't have to live in the world of courage that everyone else does. I like creating, it's what I do, and acting allows me to stretch all those different muscles in all kinds of ways. That's pretty cool. — Roddy Piper

I don't like my voice that much. I think I'm a much better actress than singer. Singing is like going to a party at someone else's house. Acting is like having the party at your own house. When you go to someone else's house for a party, it's not your responsibility at all, but when you have the party at your own house, there's a lot of responsibility. Everyone has to have a good time. So for me, acting is deeper. — Cher

Writing is something I took up rather than anything I had an inclination toward. I like acting -delivering someone else's message - but writing is more of an accomplishment. — Steve Martin

Nothing affects my acting. Acting is something I do with my soul so it embodies a lot of things. For me, I don't know about anyone else, acting is spiritual, so if I do not embody a character or a story or a script, it's going to be extremely difficult for me to be convincing and I don't like that because I am somewhat of a perfectionist — Genevieve Nnaji

When I was a teenager I loved acting, but I really just loved it for myself. I didn't like the fact that anyone else saw the work I was doing. When I moved to New York, I started to realize that I wanted people to see the stuff that I was doing, and I wanted it to mean something to them. — Joseph Gordon-Levitt

Every person has a right to be unhappy, to suffer in peace without someone else telling her that she is acting like a spoiled brat. Without a certain someone telling her constantly that her life is the stuff that everyone else dreams about. Happiness is not a one-size-fits-all kind of thing. — Suzanne Selfors

I despise this false lucidity that comes with age. The truth is that they are just like everyone else: nothing more than kids without a clue about what has happened to them, acting big and tough when in fact all they want is to burst into tears.
And yet there's nothing to understand. The problem is that children believe what adults say and, once they're adults themselves, they exact their revenge by deceiving their own children. 'Life has meaning and we grown-ups know what it is' is the universal lie that everyone is supposed to believe. Once you become an adult and you realize that's not true, it's too late. The mystery remains intact, but all your available energy has long been wasted on stupid things. All that's left is to anesthetize yourself by trying to hide the fact that you can't find any meaning in your life, and then, the better to convince yourself, you deceive your own children. — Muriel Barbery

Moreover, knowing the "right answers" - knowing which ones they are, being able to identify them - does not mean we believe them. To believe them, like believing anything else, means that we are set to act as if they (the right answers) are true and that we will do so in appropriate circumstances. And acting as if the right answers are true means, in turn, that we intend to obey the example and teachings of Jesus the Anointed. What else would we intend if we believed he is who his people through the ages have declared him to be? — Dallas Willard

I think I got into acting because I kind of had not much else to do! I guess I was kind of looking for something challenging. I heard about the London Theater scene and it was very different from the upbringing that I had and it felt like a challenge. And the whole sort of London Theater schools, I was told that 6,000 apply and there are like 30 accepted to each one. I was like, "Yeah. Let's see if we can do that!" — Jeremy Irvine

I do not belong to you, or to anyone else. I will talk to whomever I want, whenever I want."
"Not if it's some ass who thinks he can put his hands on you!"
Erica couldn't believe what she was hearing. Ethan had never acted like this before and the fact that there were so many people to witness it made it that much more horrifying.
"What if it's some ass who's acting like a Neanderthal and thinks I am his property?" She spoke through teeth clenched tight.
"You didn't have a problem with me acting like a caveman last night. — Melissa Hale

I loved plays, I loved films, but I had no desire to act until I had just put out my album 'Like Water for Chocolate.' Creatively, I felt like I'd hit a ceiling, and I needed something else to express myself, and I just decided to take acting classes. — Common

Acting is very personal. I don't want to be like anybody else. There are positions I would like to be in - like Meryl Streep's, for instance. — Catherine Mary Stewart

The cut was only the beginning. With Goldi acting as art director, a couple of girls in pink smocks swooped in and painstakingly separated strands of his hair and painted them with a noxious substance. Then they carefully encased the locks in foil so he resembled a Star Trek extra. He was placed in a chair where - no lie - they lowered a plastic dome over his head and set it on Bake. Under the plastic dryer-dome, Bo sat there like an abductee and pondered what else his captors had in mind. He wondered when they were going to bring out the probe. — Susan Wiggs

I'm definitely inspired by music; I feel like I can express a part of myself, a part of my heart and my soul, that I can't express just acting by writing music or singing music. It takes the emotions to another level. I feel really connected to something else, you know. — Laura Bell Bundy

Sometimes you're watching a great film actor, and if you stand 10 feet away from them, you're like, 'God, they're terrible. They're not doing anything.' And then you see the close-up, and it's so nuanced, and so much expression is happening. They were acting for that camera and for no one else. — Finn Wittrock