Actor Funny Quotes & Sayings

It's funny because I've resisted acting as a career for most of my life. But both my parents told me if I ever want to direct, I should act first because no director should direct until they know what it's like to be in the actor's shoes. — Dylan Penn

You couldn't hope to make a drama and have people rewriting on the day and having the actors making suggestions, "Wouldn't it be funny if my character did this?" "No. You're the actor. I'll tell you what to do." — Declan Lowney

One of my favorite comedies is 'Groundhog Day' and 'Scrooged.' I love Bill Murray, and I think he's a great example of an actor who is funny. — Fiona Gubelmann

Whenever I mention Greg Kinnear's name to anyone, they always say, "Oh, love him!" He's a really terrific actor, and very funny. — Miranda Otto

First of all, i'm not an actor - I'm an asshole. — Chelsea Handler

I definitely knew I wanted to be an actor in high school. I was doing plays and musicals, and I loved 'Saturday Night Live' and thought that was what I wanted to do - funny sketches and comedies. So I knew then, but I didn't know how to go about it, but I found my way. — Jerry Trainor

As an actor, you can really play the intensity and gravity and seriousness of the moment, and just rely on the circumstances being funny. The joke is kind of the situation you're in, or the way you're reacting to something, as opposed to the characters just saying something witty. — Ed Helms

I saw a commercial for an above-ground pool, it was 30 seconds long. Because that's the maximum amount of time you can picture yourself having fun in an above-ground pool. If it was 31 seconds, the actor would say "The water is only up to here? What do I do now? Throw the ball back to Jimmy? Or put some goggles on and look at his feet?" — Mitch Hedberg

The hardest thing for me to do, and the best thing I've done and learned as an actor is to sacrifice being funny in certain circumstances in order to do something that makes sense for the story or the character, or emotionally. — Jonah Hill

In addition to being an extraordinary actor, Bryan Cranston is a really generous guy and also very funny. — David Costabile

It's funny how being an actor forces you to do things or go places that you wouldn't ordinarily. — Natalie Dormer

I'm not a comedian. I'm an actor who just happens to be funny on occasion. — Anthony Anderson

At one point you think, well, it's funny, I could just be a starving actor. So if somebody were to pull the plug, there'd be no room for complaint. — Michael Fassbender

It's weird how an actor can read a script and think 'it's really good, it's really funny, that's going to be really dramatic ... ' and then you get there and say: "Oh, I have to get in it? I have to get in the water?! Are you kidding?" — Jamie Bell

Know your job and don't fake it. It looks easy, but the ones that make it look easy know what the hell they're doing. They may tell you around the dining room table that you're funny and you should be an actor, but until you challenge yourself by getting on a stage or in front of a camera, that's when your knowledge of the craft separates you from the pretenders. — Dustin Diamond

As an actor, when you're doing comedies, you're around fantastic, funny people and you hopefully have a really good time doing it. — Ari Graynor

And sometimes you're not noticing a little eye movement that's hilarious. So it all kind of gets figured out in post. And that guy you were watching was this guy Murray Miller, who's actually not an actor, he's a writer that Rodney and I are friends with. He's just crazily funny, especially when hitting on people. — Nicholas Stoller

I'm not a broad comedy guy. I've been funny in movies, but I'm not a comedian. I'm an actor who's sometimes funny. — Matthew Lillard

I don't think there has been any increase in sophistication in the audience. When people are aware of a concept that's easy to understand, and there's an actor who will attract them to the theater and it's a movie that's funny three-quarters of the time, it will be successful. — David Zucker

I know an actor who would play one type of part but could never get cast as tough. Once he got cast as tough, as a cop, he only got offered cop roles. It's a funny business in that regard. It's all about perception. — Paul Dano

In all my years as an actor, I had never been me - I had always hidden behind my glasses, mustaches and funny voices. — Jon Pertwee

The comedians I liked were Bill Cosby and Steven Wright, like just always as a comedic actor. I always liked Gary Larson, who's really funny for a cartoonist, obviously. — Demetri Martin

You become funny for a reason. I became an actor because that's who I was, nothing else - it was the only thing I was good at. You become a clown and you make people laugh because a) it protects you from everything, and b) it's this validating force in your life. And when you're 12 and 13 years old, you need validation and you're lost and you're kind of floating and you suffer from a severe learning disability and you're overweight and you have glasses ... you become funny for a reason. — Matthew Lillard

You never saw Peter Sellers the actor trying to make you laugh. All he was doing was the character. What I'm saying is that I don't think you should know you're in a movie. I don't like it when actors are winking at the audience and saying, 'Right, isn't this funny? Are you with me?' — Steve Carell

It's very hard to find a good child actor. There are a lot of child actors out there, especially in America, and they're cute kids, but most child actors appear on sitcoms where their main role is to be cute and make funny little remarks. — George R R Martin

Christoph Waltz is stunning, an insanely nice guy. He is not only a ridiculously good actor, he's also funny, helpful & a good colleague. I like his work ethic. I mean, the guy has won an Oscar and despite that he is receptive, open-minded & not the least bit snooty. Reese Witherspoon is the same. It may be the nicest cast that I have worked with yet. — Robert Pattinson

Thing is, I'm a funny actor, but I'm not good at being funny. I'm going to ramble for a second: I'm an actor who can make things funny in the moment, like in stakes or in circumstances or out of character. — Matthew Lillard

What is important to me as an actor is that, even if I have to spread my arms, take my shirt off on a mountain top with my heroine in a chiffon sari, it still has to be me and my twist or my funny take on it. — Vir Das

Evan Handler is not only a fine actor, he's a damn good writer. It's Only Temporary is wise and funny and as righteously indignant as it is endearingly self-effacing. In what may be a literary first, the book actually left me wanting more. — Meghan Daum

When I was a kid, I wanted to be serious, like Daniel Day-Lewis. No one really dreams of being a comic actor, do they? Now I realise how stupid that is - and it's because comic acting isn't taken seriously enough. It's a discipline. You know instantly - either you're funny and getting the laughs, or you're not. — Chris O'Dowd

There's nothing I dislike more than being in a photo shoot where they say, 'Be yourself.' That's not why I became an actress. That's what I find so funny: that you become an actor, and all of a sudden, everyone wants to know about you. But I didn't become an actor so I could show you me. — Margot Robbie

Rory is very established in England, which you are seeing right now with Bond. But his father Roy Kinnear was a very, very beloved comedy actor here in the UK. And Rory actually even looks a bit like his dad. And so it makes a lot of sense to me that Rory has such good comic chops because it's in his blood. He's very, very funny as Sean. — Simon Pegg

It's funny, because I've never thought of myself as a Hispanic actor, like in 'American Gangster,' I'm playing an Italian. I've always been fortunate enough to have been allowed to play all these diverse roles. — Yul Vazquez

I have a really dry sense of humor. I don't think it's funny when people wink at the camera. That's more of an actor thing, just committing to whatever the thing is. — Topher Grace

When I was a kid, I wanted to be as good an actor as Patrick, as cool as Frakes, and as funny as Brent. From time to time, one of them would say something to me that made me feel like I'd taken a step in that direction, and it always meant the world to me. I loved it when Brent would joke around with me, because it made me feel like I was the peer I so desperately wanted to be, instead of the clueless teenager I knew I was. — Wil Wheaton

Probably more than any concrete vice or failing Amory despised his own personality - he loathed knowing that to-morrow and the thousand days after he would sell pompously at a compliment and sulk at an ill word like a third-rate musician or a first-class actor. — F Scott Fitzgerald

When a dramatic actor does a funny film, people are like, 'Wonderful! I didn't know he was funny!' But when it flips, people can get really thrown by it. — Will Ferrell

I don't have any regrets," a famous movie actor said in an interview I recently witnessed. "I'd live everything over exactly the same way."
"That's really pathetic," the talk show host said. "Are you seeking help?"
"Yeah. My shrink says we're making progress. Before, I wouldn't even admit that I would live it all over," the actor said, starting to choke up. "I thought one life was satisfying enough."
"My God," the host said, cupping his hand to his mouth.
"The first breakthrough was when I said I would live it over, but only in my dreams. Nocturnal recurrence."
"You're like the character in that one movie of yours. What's it called? You know, the one where you eat yourself."
"The Silence of Sam."
"That's it. Can you do the scene?"
The actor lifts up his foot to stick it in his mouth. I reach over from my seat and help him to fit it into his bulging cheeks. The audience goes wild. — Benson Bruno

So many people, my friends and family, were all saying, "You're so funny. Why don't you become a comedian or an actor?" But it wasn't a reality at the time, it wasn't a road that Latin people were accepted in. — John Leguizamo

They were exactly the same morons that laugh like hyenas in the movies at stuff that isn't funny. I swear to God, if I were a piano player or an actor or something and all those dopes thought I was terrific, I'd hate it. I wouldn't even want them to clap for me. People always clap for the wrong things. — J.D. Salinger

It was funny on '24' because I'm a Scots-Canadian, and I was working with the great Scottish actor Tony Curran, and we were both playing Russian gangsters. — Callum Keith Rennie

If you are a great dramatic actor then you often don't know if people are enjoying your stuff at all because they are sitting there in silence. But with comedy it's a simple premise. If it's funny, people laugh. If it's not, they don't. — Steve Coogan

As an actor you get categorized by other people, but it's not like I arrange myself into comedy mode or serious mode. If it's good writing you just have to play it true - if it's funny, it's funny. But obviously you don't want it to be amusing if you're playing Hedda Gabler! — Sophie Thompson

Jack Lemmon is my best friend and he's a very wonderful actor. A very talented, very funny man. A lovely man. We're like brothers! We are gifts to each other. He's such a fun personality. There will only ever be one Jack Lemmon. — Tony Curtis

You can't be a casual observer of something humorous - you have to engage, you have to find it funny for the relationship between actor and audience to work. — Brendan Coyle

The character and the actor in a long-running series slowly become one. I think there must be funny stories about actors who, in the pilot for a TV series, did some weird thing with their eyes, or some speech impediment or something, and the next thing you know, it's eight years later, and they're still doing that freaking gag. — William H. Macy

You can't be trying to be funny. As an adult actor, sometimes I'll muddle it up by over-thinking things. — David Walton

I have a very healthy growth of both head and facial hair. People always want to attribute further superhuman powers to me. It's funny the way the audience really seems to want me, Nick the actor, to exhibit the same machismo as Ron Swanson. — Nick Offerman

I want to be a little more dramatic nowadays. I definitely want something big and funny, but I look for things that can just have people see me in a different light and let me mature as both an entertainer and an actor and a comedian. — Cedric The Entertainer

Cannes is a circus, so you have to have fun with it. Everything suddenly becomes funny. And the promotion of a movie - that's where you really need to be a good actor. You need to make journalists believe that what you're saying is just for them and you've never said it before, even when you're talking about the same film over and over again. — Mathieu Amalric

Come on, if you don't win tonight it doesn't mean you're not a good person, it just means you're not a good actor. — Ellen DeGeneres

It's funny, because I was trained as a dramatic actor at New York's Colonnades Theater Lab in the '70s, along with Jeff Goldblum, Danny DeVito and Rhea Perlman. People I worked with there saw a comedian in me. I'm still most at home in comedy. — Peter Scolari

I am a fan of all genres. My big thing is to serve the purpose of the script and what the director wants. If it's a comedy, I want to be funny; if it's action, I want to bring the action. If it's drama, I want to be the catalyst for that drama. That's the fun part; it never gets boring being an actor. — Terry Crews

The great thing about Eminem is, he's just hysterical. You forget, people like Eminem because he is riotously funny. And he's a great actor. — Judd Apatow

I am a pretty good actor. Most of my friendships are based on the fact that I pretend to be outgoing and funny in social situations, but when I get home, I tend to isolate myself because I am actually somewhat bipolar and introverted. — Reese Roper

You, the actor, must be aware of when you're being funny, but the character you're playing should always be oblivious to the fact. — Jon Lovitz

I'm known as a kind of dramatic, serious, almost humorless actor and the fact is, I'm a funny guy, and I spend most of my life trying to find a lighter side of things, and on stage was given plenty of opportunity to do that. — Campbell Scott

God, could that dopey girl dance. Buddy Singer and his stinking band was playing 'Just One of Those Things' and even they couldn't ruin it entirely. It's a swell song. I didn't try any trick stuff while we danced
I hate a guy that does a lot of show-off tricky stuff on the dance floor
but I was moving her around plenty, and she stayed with me. The funny thing is, I thought she was enjoying it, too, till all of a sudden she came out with this very dumb remark. "I and my girl friends saw Peter Lorre last night," she said. "The movie actor. In person. He was buyin' a newspaper. He's cute."
"You're lucky," I told her. "You're really lucky. You know that?" She was really a moron. But what a dancer. — J.D. Salinger

I mean, sometimes ... a comedian becomes an actor, and they just don't deliver, because the bottom line of comedy is to be funny, and the bottom line of acting is to be truthful, and they get that mixed up sometimes, or don't even notice that that's the thing. — Eddie Izzard

As an actor, you want people to see you as a whole person, not just a single facet of your emotional spectrum. And whether it's the audience or the industry, you end up getting pigeonholed as one thing. So for people to see I can be funny and stay in shape is a bit of a weight off my shoulders. — Scott Porter

It's funny, I don't even consider myself a rapper, I don't consider myself a designer, or even an actor. I just like creating stuff and trying to make good work, whatever it is. I don't care if it's designing toothbrushes. It's just making cool stuff to leave behind, that's all it is, it's nothing more. — Andre Benjamin

It's really kind of a luxury for an actor to have the opportunity to show such different types of characters. I actually left 'Cowboys & Aliens' and went straight into 'The Change-Up.' It was kind of a funny change of pace. — Olivia Wilde

It's funny, my kids and I live together, and I have a lot of actor friends. So my kids think everyone is on television every now and again, since everyone they know pops up here, but there's a whole rap of things they won't watch until they're 16 or 17. — Dallas Roberts

You know what? I never really factor Hollywood into anything. I'm a black actor, so I can't really control what Hollywood thinks. I gotta go do my thing, and my jokes have got to be funny. Whatever I do has got to be great. — Jamie Foxx

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

I wasn't a class clown, I never developed this comedic flair as a kid. Even when I decided to become an actor, it was just to be an actor, not necessarily a comedic actor. I wasn't that guy who struck out with women so he became really funny, and that's when the women started to like him. — Steve Carell

When an actor marries an actress they both fight for the mirror. — Burt Reynolds

It's funny - when I first started as an actor, obviously there were long periods of being idle and all you want to do is work. So if I ever get the compulsion to feel like I should complain or feel like I want to take a break, I just remember how I was before and be very grateful for it. — Neil Jackson

"Repeat that?"
"It's National Talk Like a Pirate Day. Didn't you know?"
"Somehow I missed the memo."
"You mean, 'Somehow I missed the memo, arrr!'"
"Precisely. Arr. So, Mrs. Jack ... Er, is that still your name? Or, I tremble to ask, have you adopted a pirate identity?"
"Arr, matey, of course I have! It's ... " She pulled an eggplant from the grocery bag. "Captain Eggplantier." She needed to stop speaking the first words that popped into her mind.
"Captain Eggplanteir." He sounded very doubtful.
"That's right. A family name. It's Belgian. — Shannon Hale

Michael Bates was a very funny actor; he'd served in India, could speak Urdu, and had great comic timing. — Sanjeev Bhaskar

He was sensitive, so he had to be kind. I think of it whenever I see a young woman fawning all over a nerdy guy, some comedian or actor, thinking he couldn't ever be cruel because he's funny and he wears glasses. He's not conventionally hot, so he's not full of himself, so he'll be a good boyfriend, right?...Guys like that always seem to think they're Duckie from Pretty in Pink when they're actually Steff. — Mara Wilson

I would like to do a lot more of it, I feel comfortable with it and basically it's all in the writing. I'm not a personality type actor, I need a good script in order to be funny, but it's definitely something that I like doing. — Ray Liotta

I grew up in Middle America and I don't think my family was very funny, but I watched 'The Princess Bride.' I always wanted to be an actor. I didn't know anything about it. I'd never seen any plays or anything and I watched that movie over and over and over again. — Missi Pyle

I'll watch a Keanu Reeves movie and I'll go, 'Wow, he's really not a very good actor!' — Ashton Kutcher

As a writer myself, my job has very often been to also write on the job. So you get the script and a vague idea of how the scene might work, and you then add funny words or change the script. I'm not the world's best writer or the world's best actor, but I can do that thing where I can fix - or ruin - fix-slash-ruin, add quirk, add value. — Sally Phillips

I was like, what the hell is my life coming to? I'm a trained actor! I've done Shakespeare and here I am having farting contests with an imaginary dog! — Matthew Lillard

It's funny when people ask an actor what they want to play next, because you don't get to decide what you play. I don't know. I can only say this: I don't want to and have no interest in playing a plastic surgeon. That's for sure. I'm open to anything else. — Dylan Walsh

It's funny in the U.K., where I'm not really known because I never did a soap. My English cousins in the Lake District think I'm not a real actor because they've never seen me in 'Home and Away' or 'Neighbours.' — Jacki Weaver

I learned a great lesson early on, even before I was really an actor, from that movie 'Planes, Trains & Automobiles' that John Hughes made: that you could make a movie that's really, really, really, really funny, and sometimes you can still achieve ... making the audience feel very deep emotions as well. — Joel Edgerton

I played a lot of serious parts in a lot of TV movies and early miniseries but what happens is that you get sort of locked into "Oh no, he's a serious actor." Well, I was a serious actor for nine years or 10 years and then I get into comedy and everybody said, "Oh no, he's funny. He can do comedy," and then all of a sudden, you're just a comedy guy. — Barry Bostwick

It's funny, when you become an actor and you're successful, they don't want to talk about acting any more. 'Hey let's talk about that stuff you were fired from.' — Nicholas Brendon

The less lines, the better. I am the silent film actor, but not in a slapstick sort of way. Film is an image-based medium, so whatever you can say without the words is far more provocative and punctuating. If the lines are not funny or if they don't advance the story, sometimes it's hard. I hate talk in movies. — Callum Keith Rennie

Only criminals and madmen walk into Central Park after midnight...or, occasionally, an actor. (Dark City Lights) — Jane Dentinger

I'm a goofball, so I think comedy is one of my stronger points, as an actor. I just never get to do it. But, I'm taking classes at Groundlings, where Will Ferrell and Lisa Kudrow studied, and it's all improv comedy. It feels good to be able to do that and be funny. — Tinsel Korey

It's funny, in a way the actor is a writer. It's not like the two things are so separate as to be like apples and oranges. The writer and the actor are one. — Sam Shepard

A good actor is someone who knows how to take the part and make it real and make it honest and be effective in it. If it's in a funny movie and, as long as they are cast in an appropriate way, humor will come from it. — Ivan Reitman

Jake Johnson wanted to make clear that he was the great American actor, not just the funny guy on 'New Girl.' — Colin Trevorrow

As an actor, it's always fun when you're able to feel like there's freedom to explore things and try out jokes and be funny. — Busy Philipps

I also think if you're an actor and you can improvise, when you go on an audition and you can improvise you're just a genius. If you can, you know, take a Tide commercial and you can just say one funny line that's not in the commercial they think you're a genius. — Amy Poehler

When I made a breakthrough as an actor, people started to say, 'Who's that bloke with the funny name?' They advised me to change it, saying it would never be put up in lights outside theaters because they couldn't afford the electricity. But I would never contemplate changing it. It's who I am. — Pete Postlethwaite

You cannot hurt animals, so what do I do? I kill the dog first. Then I do it with the boy. You're not supposed to break the illusion of this being a film, so I make the actor talk to the audience. Provocation is the principle of the whole film [ Funny Games]. It is very ironic. — Michael Haneke

You should've heard the crowd, though, when he was finished. You would've puked. They went mad. They were exactly the same morons that laugh like hyenas in the movies at stuff that isn't funny. I swear to God, if I were a piano player or an actor or something and all those dopes thought I was terrific, I'd hate it. I wouldn't even want them to clap for me. People always clap for the wrong things. If I were a piano player, I'd play in the goddam closet. — J.D. Salinger

Bill Murray is a wonderful actor, and he's very funny, and I've seen him be serious and terrific. — Geoffrey Ward

Here's the funny thing about the response I've been aware of to my dating famous people: It's been very negative. I'm either not good-looking enough, not a good enough actor or not successful enough for these people. — Dax Shepard

Alex the waiter was on my Spank Naughty list in third place, right after Henry Calvill the actor, then Henry Calvill as Superman. He was proof that God existed, and that God loved straight women. — Penny Reid

Nick Offerman is my hero. He just cracks me up. He's so funny, but he's a true actor, too - he's bringing so much when he's onscreen. — Chris Pratt

As an actor myself, the opportunity to sing and dance and be dramatic and be funny - it's really irresistible to actors. You get to show all sides of your talent. — Elizabeth Banks

Once an actor told me he went to the Shakespeare School of Acting, and I said, 'I went to the Shakespeare of Acting, too' and he said, 'Oh really?' And I said, 'I went to Shakespeare Elementary School in Chicago.' He didn't take the joke well, he didn't laugh and didn't think it was funny - I thought it was funny. It's all the same to me. — Michael Clarke Duncan

To be honest with you, the dramatic side is more fun to play because I don't get to do it as often as I get to do the comedy stuff. Most of my work in this business has been comedy, and that's sort of the way the cookie crumbles. I had not sought out to just be a comedic actor, but I think that's my default because I come from a funny family. — Erica Ash