Actor Life 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

In this life, you're either a man or an actor, there's nothing in between. — Andrea Pirlo

What it is is that comedy is underrepresented in every actor's life, because it's so bloody difficult to write. Anyone can write; and then you leave it to special effects to make it look good. But comedy, you've got to do some writing. — Michael Caine

You know what your problem is, it's that you haven't seen enough movies - all of life's riddles are answered in the movies.
Steve Martin — Steve Martin

You are successful if you are able to work on the kind of material that you want to - if your life conforms to your dreams, regardless of outside acceptance or acclaim. — James Franco

After I directed, when I went back to being an actor, I was like, 'God, this is the life!' Because you only have to concentrate on one thing. — Campbell Scott

Ordinarily during the stage of your life when you're going through your adolescence and you're completely awkward and uncomfortable, the rest of the world isn't watching you with bated breath. It's different when you're an actor and you choose to work your way through that period because it only makes it worse. — Tina Majorino

If you have life's experiences with you, nothing can stop you from being a competent actor. — Randeep Hooda

Getting sober was one of the three pivotal events in my life, along with becoming an actor and having a child. Of the three, finding my sobriety was the hardest thing. — Gary Oldman

The big turn in the late '90s was that I realized I was going to be doing this for a long time. I was fairly sure I was going to be an actor for the rest of my life, which I think calmed me down. — Michael Weatherly

My father and I used to tussle about me becoming an actor. He's from strong, Presbyterian Scottish working-class stock, and he used to sit me down and say, 'You know, 99 percent of actors are out of work. You've been educated, so why do you want to spend your life pretending to be someone else when you could be your own man?' — Tom Hiddleston

I don't want to just be an actor my whole life. I mean I do want to be an actor my whole life but not only an actor, I want to be an artist. — Ansel Elgort

We all have loads of information. What an actor does is bring it to the surface. I jump without a net because that's how I am. The information comes out because I am brave enough to allow it. I'm not brave as a human being in everyday life. I'm brave when I'm acting. — Charlotte Rampling

Too often in their church life people adopt an attitude of the theater, imagining the preacher is an actor and they his critics, praising and blaming the performances. Actually, the people are the actors on the stage of life. The preacher is merely the prompter, reminding the people of their lost lines. — John F. MacArthur Jr.

More than most people, the alcoholic leads a double life. He is very much the actor — Bill W.

My fantasy life was very full. Certainly when I was a kid, I probably wanted to be an actor because I wanted to be a princess, or something magical, and get to dress up magically, and have the kind of life that I hadn't been born into, with magic powers or whatever, and live this wonderful idealised life. — Raquel Cassidy

What's important about an actor is his acting, not his life. — Vincent Price

To want to be an actor is enough - you don't need to tell us about it. The interesting person who comes with some life experience is always the person who is going to be chosen by me. — Kenny Ortega

Your job, as an actor, is never to just do what you're told. That's boring, and life is too short. It's your job to bring something, and it will either be to other people's taste or your own taste, and you have to try things out. Actors say, "Well, as long as the director's happy," but I don't believe that and I don't agree with that. I want the director to be happy, but if I'm not happy, I won't sleep at night. — Martin Freeman

I don't want to restrict the life of a play to a particular production. The original actors might leave after the first six months, and I want the play to last 30 or 40 years. You write for the character, not the actor on the stage. — Neil Simon

I have always weirdly seen myself as more of a character actor. I have never been suave. I could never see myself playing James Bond. I suppose I could fake it, but I am certainly not James Bond in real life. — James Marsden

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

Well, I'm a character actor, and actually throughout my life I've ... I have relatively speaking played few heroic leads, but I've done it. — Rene Auberjonois

Eager watch was
kept for the first appearance of the legendary creature in the village, and it may be said that as far as
appearances went Basil Blake was all that could be asked for. Little by little, however, the real facts
leaked out. Basil Blake was not a film star, not even a film actor. He was a very junior person, rejoicing
in the position of about fifteenth in the list of those responsible for set decorations at Lenville Studios,
headquarters of British New Era Films. The village maidens lost interest and the ruling class of censorious
spinsters took exception to Basil Blake's way of life. — Agatha Christie

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

I quite like the transitions of being an actor, because you get to explore these little pockets of life. So if you're playing a builder you get to know about building, if you're playing a scientist or a physician or something you get to know about physics. And similarly with this world I like exploring their culture, that very sort of upper middle class, addictive ... that's part of the reason I love it. — Matt Smith

An actor's life is the shadow of a cloud, the echo of a sound, the memory of a dream, nothing come of nothing. The finest actor does not create, he is but a translator of another man's work. — Fanny Kemble

I truly believe that the job of an actor and the drive of an actor is simulating the internal journey in life which is to get deeper and deeper into our understanding of who we are. — Hugh Jackman

I always wanted to direct. I always saw myself as a director. I know that I've definitely found what I should be doing with my life. In my life, as far as my career goes, I always felt, as an actor, that it was something that would just be a temporary thing that would get me to what I wanted to do next. That's what my acting did. — Steve Antin

I love playing all kinds of roles. I hope it doesn't sound too pretentious, but I always feel human nature is like a piano, and there are 88 keys, and there are some white keys and some black keys, and each character is a different chord on the piano. Basically, I hope that in the course of my life, I will have played all 88 keys. So, I'll have played heroes and villains and princes and kings and warriors and beggars and thieves and lovers and fathers and wizards and all of those things. That is why I'm an actor ... I love studying people. — Tom Hiddleston

I had this vivid image of myself at the age of 60 looking back on my life and truly regretting the fact that I hadn't tried to be an actor — Lupita Nyong'o

I think it's important to keep your personal life to yourself as much as you can. It protects your sanity and you need to have boundaries. And it helps that enchantment of watching an actor. If you know someone's favourite colour or what they like to do on a Sunday, you won't fall for the character as much. — Dianna Agron

You hope for that with anything, but with a TV show, the writer and the actor being the right mix are more important than the actual writing of the pilot because you hope it's something that can have a long life. — Jake Kasdan

There's more to life than being an actor in a Hollywood movie. I'm not going to adapt my life after that existence, where a lot of people do. And they get the publicist, and they get all that stuff, and it becomes them. I think it's a stupid way to live your life. A really dumb way to live your life. — Zach Galifianakis

The great thing about NYU, and the reason I chose to go there, was the fact that they don't inhibit you as an actor and tell you, 'You only have to study acting. This is it for the rest of your life.' They're really great at balancing other things; you get to study two days a week anything you want unrelated to acting. — Roberto Aguire

I know this is going to sound corny, but I love my life. I love my baby, so I love getting to wake up with him. And I have the most amazing job, with writing that any actor would love and costars who I can't wait to see on Monday mornings. And I love coming home to my husband. — Julianna Margulies

There has got to be more to life than being a really, really, ridiculously good actor. — Gary Busey

I knew even before I had desire that it would be gnarled and knotted, black and hard, a tree that would never bear fruit, a fish that would never jump, a cat that would never meow. All my life, bitterness and regret, bitterness, and regret. "And yet," he said, briefly closing his eyes, "I was able to imagine the softness and sweetness of love, for a time." He rested his head upon his right hand, in a gesture worthy of a classical actor, and everyone in the Teatro Barbarossa heard his breathing. — Mark Helprin

The theater I got to do informs every move I make as an actor and will for the rest of my life. I can't shake it if I wanted to, but I don't want to. — Jim Parsons

I think I know where my life went wrong. For all the world's a stage and I'm a lousy actor! — Greg Curtis

Like the actor, authority has faith in its false whiskers. But its deepest faith is in the human illusion. People will hang on to illusion as eagerly as life itself. — Ben Hecht

There's this great fantasy of going to work, every day, and getting to play out what people think my life is, as a successful actor. — Robert Knepper

I try not to date where I work. It makes life easier. I don't say no to anybody because I'd hope that people wouldn't say no to me just because I'm an actor - but they'd have to be pretty extraordinary. — Anne Hathaway

The reason I wanted to be an actor is that I don't want to play me for the rest of my life and make money out of that. — James D'arcy

I've met a lot of actors who have three dreams: You dream of making a sci-fi, you dream of making a Western and you dream of making a vampire movie. So this is one of my life-dreams as an actor coming true. — Richard Sammel

I don't discount a magical hand of fate. I am an actor, after all, and a Shakespearian, no less. But it can't be the ruling force of your life. You have to be the driver. — Gayle Forman

Few people in one's life ever go quite away. They turn up again like characters in a Simon Raven novel. It is as if Fate is a movie producer who cannot afford to keep introducing new characters into the script but must get as many scenes out of every actor as possible. — Stephen Fry

An old man in poor health, like my rival, could not be expected to be so impressively feeble as a young actor in the prime of life. You see, he really had paralysis, and working within this definite limitation, he couldn't be so jolly paralytic as I was. — Anonymous

The actor becomes an emotional athlete. The process is painful - my personal life suffers. — Al Pacino

I offer you a second way of approaching the moment where everything in your life just stops, this one from the actor Robert Duvall: "I exist very nicely between the words 'action' and 'cut.'"
And even a third way: "It doesn't present as pain," I once heard an oncological surgeon say of cancer. — Joan Didion

It's increasingly rare for me to find things that challenge me as an actor because the challenge of my personal life, and how fulfilling I find it, is tough to compete with. — Julia Roberts

The year you win an Oscar is the fastest year in a Hollywood actor's life. Twelve months later they ask, 'Who won the Oscar last year?' — Cliff Robertson

As an actor, you get to sort of bounce back and forth in terms of the age range you play and the life experience that your characters have. — Jonathan Keltz

'Taxi Driver' is a movie that changed my life and made me a serious actor. Scorsese and De Niro. I give credit for anything that I've ever done as an actor. — Michael Biehn

I just feel that God gave me a certain gift, and that was to go out, do storytelling and be an actor. And my responsibility with that gift is to do the best job possible and to re-create real life. — Eric Close

I am not a politician going around bragging about family values or putting myself on some ridiculous virtuous pedestal. I write comedy. And I am an actor. I am not going to solve the nation's problems. I don't actually spend my life in the way the tabloids like to think I do. I actually spend 95 percent of it writing comedy. Sober. Well, nearly sober anyway. — Steve Coogan

What are the years from twenty to forty? Fettered and bound by personal and emotional relationships. That's bound to be. That's living. But later there's a new stage. You can think, observe life, discover something about other people and the truth about yourself. Life becomes real
significant. You see it as a whole. Not just one scene
the scene you, as an actor, are playing. No man or woman is actually himself (or herself) till after forty-five. That's when individuality has a chance. — Agatha Christie

Cosmopolis is the movie of my life. I didn't consider myself an actor before, even if I had 10 years of acting behind me. I always felt like a fraud, and inappropriate. I doubt a lot. David Cronenberg gave me confidence in myself. He changed my way of acting and thinking in this industry. — Robert Pattinson

If I had a long-term partner, I don't think I'd be an actor. It'd be too much of a strain; you have to work too hard to balance that life with a family and a mortgage and all that stuff - it would be too much. — Rory McCann

As an actor, your life experience is just as important as studying. — Jane Badler

It's a hard thing for me to wrap my mind around the C word: celebrity. Rock stars are celebrities because they're larger than life. As an actor, you have to play the everyman and the everygirl. If you start treating people in the real world like assistants, that's not a good look. But my friends keep me grounded. — Channing Tatum

Fireworks made of glass. An explosion of dew. Crescendo. Diminuendo. Silence.
There are drugs that work the same, and while I am not suggesting that our founder purchased the glassworks to get more drops, it is clear that she had the seed planted, not once, but twice, and knew already the lovely contradictory nature of glass and she did not have to be told, on the day she saw the works at Darling Harbour, that glass is a thing in disguise, an actor, is not solid at all, but a liquid, that an old sheet of glass will not only take on a royal and purplish tinge but will reveal its true liquid nature by having grown fatter at the bottom and thinner at the top, and that even while it is as frail as the ice on a Parramatta puddle, it is stronger under compression than Sydney sandstone, that it is invisible, solid, in short, a joyous and paradoxical thing, as good a material as any to build a life from. — Peter Carey

I always get role models, people from real life who've lived the lives of the characters, and talk it through together, me, them and the actor, a lot. That helps. We certainly have our disagreements. But in the end we trust each other. — Tony Scott

About actors' lives ... I'm not the person to ask. I don't live an actor's life and I really don't know. I probably read less about actors' lives than you all do. So, I'm in the dark about all of that, sorry. — Tilda Swinton

I've been lucky enough - well, maybe unlucky enough - to have had a lot of friends who have had their ups and downs. And for an actor, that's good. Life experience in any regard is good. So I've seen a lot and I've had my own experiences. — Chris Evans

Over time as an actor, your life with a project can be so short lived because you come on, you do it, and then you're done. You have no control, no say, and all of a sudden there's all of this distance between the work you've put into something and the product as you see it appear on-screen. — Maggie Siff

My grandmother raised me for a good portion of my life. She moved to Los Angeles with me to be an actor, so I've always had a connection with an older generation. — Britt Robertson

Sometimes in the life of an actor you're not getting offered any jobs that speak to you. The trouble with acting is that you're only as good as your opportunities. — Ethan Hawke

The first state an actor experiences onstage is the one he just experienced in life. One needs great courage not to portray this experience. One must surrender entirely to the power of one s artistic nature. It will do all the necessary things. Do not impose any solution upon yourself in advance. The quality to develop in an actor is courage. — Yevgeny Vakhtangov

I've been for 10 years trying to make something out of my life as an actor. I've learned a lot but I haven't done much that's worthwhile. So maybe if I make people wonder what I really do look like and make myself unrecognizable, they will be interested and intrigued, which eventually, of course, happened. — Christopher Lee

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

One of the great, truly extraordinary privileges of being an actor is to interact with individuals from all walks of life, you know, from avocations that you wouldn't ordinarily interact with or people you wouldn't ordinarily interact with. — Matt Lauria

I learned so much by being an actor, and part of my sort-of development as a writer is big thanks to the scripts I read in my acting life. — Joel Edgerton

Interestingly, the word 'person' did not originally refer to the individual in the way we tend to use it today. Instead, 'person' came, via french, from the Latin word 'persona', which referred to the mask worn by tan actor to protray a particular character. In this theatrical sense, personality has to do with the role or character that the person plays in life's drama. The person's individuality, in this sense, is a matter of the roles or characters that he or she assumes. — Nick Haslam

How many times, in any actor's life, do you get to be a part of something that has a legacy like [Buffy]? I think that's only fortunate. I don't see the negative. — Sarah Michelle Gellar

In order to deceive others, it is necessary also to deceive oneself. The actor playing Hamlet must indeed believe that he is the Prince of Denmark, though when he leaves the stage he will usually remember who he really is. On the other hand, when someone's entire life is based on pretense, they will seldom if ever return to reality. That is the secret of successful politicians, evangelists and confidence tricksters - they believe that they are telling the truth, even when they know that they have faked the evidence. Sincerity, my dear Julia, is a quality not to be trusted. — Sarah Caudwell

Mum worked as a secretary for Orson Welles for what sounded like a very miserable year. Her brother was the actor Jeremy Brett, who became famous for playing Sherlock Holmes. He was an absolutely lovely man. Very exciting and glamorous, he'd always make me feel amazing and full of confidence, like I'd picked the right thing to do in life. — Martin Clunes

I'm not a big star in Japan. I'm an actor. I have a very normal life. Four days a week, I cook at home. A star doesn't do that. — Ken Watanabe

Every time I go to Europe, I remember that James Dean never saw Europe, but yet I see his face everywhere. There's James Dean, Humphrey Bogart and Marilyn Monroe - windows of the Champs Elysees, discos in the south of Spain, restaurants in Sweden, t-shirts in Moscow. My life was confused and disoriented for years by his passing. My sense of destiny destroyed - the great films he would have directed, the great performances he would have given, the great humanitarian he would have become, and yet, he's the greatest actor and star I have ever known. — Dennis Hopper

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

Andrew Lincoln has to be the nicest, ego-less lead actor that I've ever met in my life. His energy and temperament just falls over everyone. — Chad Coleman

For a moment man is a boy, for a moment a lovesick youth, for a moment bereft of wealth, for a moment in the height of prosperity; then at life's end with limbs worn out by old age and wrinkles adorning his face, like an actor he retires behind the curtain of death. — Bhartrhari

It's been a lot of fun getting to work with Tracy Middendorf, who plays my mom. As an actor, it's always fun to have different parents and to create different familial dynamics than you have in your real life. — Willa Fitzgerald

Our stories come from our lives and from the playwright's pen, the mind of the actor, the roles we create, the artistry of life itself and the quest for peace. — Maya Angelou

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

Acting is the great love of my life. It gives you permission to use all parts of yourself. Permission to be the hero, the love interest, the comedian, the villain. Transformation excites me. So does truth. Nothing is more thrilling, hilarious, and tragic than the truth. Those things motivated me to become an actor. Also, they always have the best food on set. — Blake Griffin

Any time an opportunity scares you that much, you should seriously consider saying yes. — Rob Lowe

Life is sacred. Life is art. Life is sacred art. The art of sacred living means being a holy actor, acting from the soul rather than the ego. The soul is out of space and time and hence always available, an ever-present potential of our being. It is up to each of us to celebrate and to actualize our being and to turn each meal, conversation, outfit, letter, and so on, into art. Every mundane activity is an opportunity for full authentic self-expression. The soul is our artistic self, our capacity for transforming every dimension of our lives into art and theater. — Gabrielle Roth

Perhaps society should give actors the same sort of protection it gives to those who follow a religious life. Actor/priest was originally the same job. The theater is left wing magic and theology is right wing magic. — Jennifer Stone

It's always nice when you get a chance to actually work with the other actor. It just brings the scene to life, in a way that's not as easy to replicate on your own. — Elijah Wood

I think the life of an actor is glamorous to other people, but then the reality sets in: you don't know where you will be next year or how long you'll be there for. — Joel Edgerton

I do everything I can to be the best actor I can be, the best musician I can be. I try to take risks; I try not to let fear run my life. — Robert David Hall

Jimmy [Dean] was the most talented and original actor I ever saw work. He was also a guerrilla artist who attacked all restrictions on his sensibility. Once he pulled a switchblade and threatened to murder his director. I imitated his style in art and in life. It got me in a lot of trouble. — Dennis Hopper

In movies, you get to explore parts of yourself that in real life, people shy away from, like looking stupid or embarrassing yourself or getting too angry, anything inappropriate. As an actor, you walk into those moments. — Jess Weixler

I think there's something so wonderful about being part of the process from the seed of the idea to seeing it come to life on a screen. And to have a hand in that creatively, not just showing up as an actor for hire. — Jennifer Aniston

I wouldn't date an actress. There's only room for one actor in my life and I'm it. Too difficult. On the one hand, they understand the job. But on the other hand, it's very competitive within the relationship. Two actors, say one becomes a mega-star and the other doesn't. — Jonathan Rhys Meyers

It's really weird to be in more than one franchise because an actor's life is so nomadic, and so it's a real privilege to get back together with people. — John Cho

Idris Elba is a grand actor. He's very larger than life; he's bigger than life. — Nicolas Cage

To be an actress and act crazy is really fun for me, to be able to be acting like you'd never be able to act in your real life and scream and freak out. It's an interesting test for an actor. — Alexandra Daddario

I love the life of an actor because you spend brief amounts of time with other people and then you just leave. I need to be alone a lot, and I need the outdoors. — Madeleine Stowe