Actor Quotes & Sayings

As an artist, as an actor, as a writer, you have to use what's personal to you. You have to be personal about your work; otherwise, it doesn't ring true. — Alan Alda

The trick to being a good actor is getting so involved in your character that the camera disappears, the 50 bored guys eating doughnuts disappear, friends disappear. To get to that point when you don't have to think about it, you're just acting and reacting in those circumstances. — Val Kilmer

It didn't have to be a newfound respect for the craft, I knew that it's notoriously difficult and frightens a lot of people off. I don't think anyone knows quite who to attribute it to, but the dying actor who says: "dying is easy, comedy is hard." I hear it. — Colin Firth

I was at college studying psychology, philosophy, textiles and drama. But because I wasn't one of those all-singing, all-dancing stage-school kids, I just assumed I'd never become an actor. — Kathryn Prescott

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

My litmus test of compatibility is 'Tom Cruise.' I hate people who hate Tom Cruise, cultural automatons who at the mention of his name reflexively bridle and say the diminutive thespian and Theta level Scientoligist is 'crazy' and 'a terrible actor'. They hate him because he's easy to hate. They think that despising Tom Cruise's lack of personality and supposed lack of talent is somehow a blow against the bland American Anschluss of the rest of the planet. Tom Cruise may indeed be the Christopher Columbus of the twentieth century, sent off by the kings of Hollywood to prove the new world of International Box Office isn't flat and to find a direct route into the Asian market, but the decline of everything isn't his fault; he's just a cinematic explorer and a damn fine actor. And hating him doesn't make you seditious- it makes you complicit. — Paul Beatty

I am an actor and I live in the world of pretend in my working capacity. I live in the world of my imagination. — Derek Jacobi

In the theater, you're so much more in charge as an actor. For better or for worse, you know what the audience is seeing. But you can be acting your socks off on film, and then you see the movie, and the camera is on the other actor, or they've cut out the lines you thought were significant, or they've adjusted the plot. So much of it is out of your control. — Susan Sarandon

I think every leading man wants to be a character actor, and every character actor wants to be a leading man. — Bruce Boxleitner

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

Scratch an actor and you'll find an actor. — Laurence Olivier

I never really thought of myself as being an action hero or a leading man or any of that. I'm a character actor. — Aaron Paul

As an actor, all you have is what you know and what you see in other people. The more you know, and the more you've experienced, the more you're able to communicate to other people. — Julianne Moore

I look at scripts really for whether they can be moving or penetrate some kind of truth. You are constantly chasing that feeling as an actor when every part of a production comes together. — Chiwetel Ejiofor

I've always said I would want to be a funeral director if I wasn't an actor. — Torrey DeVitto

Well, good science fiction is intelligent. It asks big questions that are on people's minds. It's not impossible. It has some sort of root in the abstract. So automatically you're getting closer to potentially divine sources of interest because it is abstract. It's one of the only ways that a film actor can express himself in the abstract and have audiences still go along for the ride. They don't contend it. They accept it, that they're going to go places that are a bit more of the imagination, a bit more out there, and that's more and more where I like to dance. — Nicolas Cage

I think when your image becomes so big that it's hard for a viewer to see a character, then I think you're in danger as an actor of being unable to perform what you should be doing. — Hugo Weaving

I don't possess a lot of self-confidence. I'm an actor so I simply act confident every time I hit the stage. — Arsenio Hall

An athlete and actor are really two different temperaments, night and day. As an athlete you really keep things out and as an actor you really bring things in. — Carl Lewis

I bring ideas to set, and I'm more than willing for those to be affected and be malleable based on what the other person gives me. I don't know what another actor is going to give me, on the day, and I don't want to be so hard and fast in my technique that I'm not open to what's coming. — Rose McIver

Mostly in movies an actor has to come to a mark, an X, and deliver his line - but that's so artificial, that's not how people really behave. — Bruce Robinson

I'm no actor. And I wasn't like George Lucas or Spielberg, making home movies as a teenager, either. But I would go back and watch certain movies again and again. By the time I saw 'The Graduate' I was aware of how these amazing stories could be told. — Nancy Meyers

Simple formula for the actor: prove you're creative enough to get the job, sane enough to keep the job, and hungry enough to give up everything else to keep them happy. — Brooke Langton

I always wanted to be an actor. I had the arrogance to believe I couldn't be anything else. — Daniel Craig

My parents are actors as well, so I grew up around that world. It was always a very romantic, mythical world. They did a lot of theater, so to me an actor was getting to come backstage and dressing room mirrors with bulbs around them and trying on people's costumes. It was very exciting to me as a child. — Phoebe Fox

I always had an actor within me. — Adrien Brody

I've done a lot of films that are purely live-action roles, and even if I hadn't come across performance capture as a technology, I think I'd always consider myself a sort of mercurial actor. — Andy Serkis

As an actor, you're listening to the other person and always trying to be present and take everything they're giving you, but when they're not there, you have to produce that yourself. — Tatiana Maslany

An actor is at most a poet and at least an entertainer. — Marlon Brando

One of the things about being a minority actor is that you don't have that opportunity as some of your counterparts to keep that flow, to constantly be going from one thing to the other, so when you see really great performances out there by some black folks, you know it's coming from somewhere deep, because they just don't work as much. — Georg Stanford Brown

There was no male vampire type in existence. Someone suggested an actor of the Continental School who could play any type, and mentioned me. — Bela Lugosi

The actor always must be in the scene, not above the scene. To communicate any larger ideas is my problem; it's how the narrative is constructed and directed that hopefully does it. — James Gray

My dream as a youngster was to be like Olivier. To be a great stage actor. To be a great Shakespearean actor. To me that is the Olympics of acting. — Armand Assante

It'd be disingenuous to say I don't like attention - I'm an actor for God's sake - and it's flattering and all, but attention was never my big goal. I just like to work and have a good time. — Paul Giamatti

For me, it is about creating a career - I'm very interested in the sports side and want to continue to do more stuff in that. But ultimately, what I consider myself to be is an actor, and the more variety I can play will continue to round me out. — Brian Baumgartner

I don't really know what kind of actor I am. — Paul Dano

Mr. [John] Barrymore's smile was the smile of an actor who hates actors, and who knows that he is going to kill two or three before the play is over. I am not an actor-killer, but I like my Hamlets to dislike actors, if you know what I mean, and I think you don't. — John Barrymore

Drama school can't make you a brilliant actor, but you can do stuff for three years - you're not going to be fired. You should just go for it all, even the stuff you think is codswallop. — Ewan McGregor

So it's joyful to me, in my 71st year, to be able to be in a play that is absolutely right for my age and my experience, and that is a popular success. What more could you ask as an actor? — Ian McKellen

The way I teach people to sing ... I have them talk the lyric out until it sounds like something they really believe, like an actor with a monologue. — Margaret Whiting

I don't think it was a surprise that I ended up as an actor, and it was anything but a disappointment. — Martin Freeman

I'd always wanted to be an actor, ever since I was very little. I don't know why. — Lydia Leonard

As an actor, you can't play big, huge things. But, what you can play is love for your father and caring for your daughter and being afraid, and having to dig deep and find out what you're made of. All of those things have been incredibly fun to play. — Kristin Bauer Van Straten

What about the whiskey?" Jack said as they ran. "Won't it keep them out?"
The Green Maidens don't drink anything but blood." Bob's disembodied voice floated after them. "The whiskey magick won't affect them."
Wonderful," the old actor muttered, a tremor of fear in his voice. "I should've poured a Bloody Mary. — Lesley Livingston

I came into the industry as an actor. And moved on to become a star with the help of my dancing skills. — Mithun Chakraborty

Even though I'm an actor, even though I know a little bit about film, I very much view things as an audience member. For me, whether it's TV, film, theater, whatever, it's a big movie, a small movie, whatever it is, I look for the truth in it. I look for the honesty. I just look for if it feels honest and real to me. — Elisabeth Moss

I'm not a comedian, I'm an actor. — Chris Diamantopoulos

I'm a stand-up comedian-turned-actor-turned-vampire at night. — Vir Das

I think as a filmmaker and as a director, you shortchange yourself if you inhibit the ability of your actor to bring their own personal experiences to the characters. — Joe Carnahan

When you're starting out as an actor, you keep raising the stakes. First, you just want to be a character who comes on stage and gets a laugh or two and exits. Just five minutes on a stage, not even Broadway. But every time you say your little prayer at night, you place more demands. — Charles Kimbrough

It's just people should realize that the celebrity aspect of being an actor is very rarely enjoyable for people like me who would always rather go unnoticed and disappear into the crowd. — Winona Ryder

There is a need for aloneness, which I don't think most people realise for an actor. It's almost having certain kinds of secrets for yourself that you'll let the whole world in on only for a moment, when you're acting. But everybody is always tugging at you. They'd all like sort of a chunk of you. — Marilyn Monroe

I haven't been in a position to have the luxury to pick roles for most of my career, so I'm not practiced in that. Usually, when you want to be an actor, you take whatever comes along. If there's an audition, you go for it. If you get the job, you do it - just to get experience, to act, to meet people. — Ken Leung

The displacement of scripted series by reality programming continues to be a severe obstacle to a working actor's ability to earn a living. — Alan Rosenberg

I did a couple comedies to balance myself as an actor and balance how audiences see Donnie Yen as an actor, and I would even say as a celebrity or icon, to some fans. I want to show that I'm not Terminator. — Donnie Yen

We film in front of a live audience, and I was a theater actor before I got into television, so I like that. — Jillian Bach

People sometimes have to be reminded, I'm not Frank Underwood. I'm an actor named Kevin Spacey. — Kevin Spacey

I think being on a film set for such a long time made me a technical actor without realizing it. — Daniel Radcliffe

After college, I went to Alley Theatre in Houston to work in their apprentice actor program. I thought I was gonna get discovered. It didn't happen. I moved back to Germantown, Tennessee, outside of Memphis, and taught at my old high school. — Chris Parnell

As an actor it's like, go with whatever excites you as an actor. What are you're going to invest yourself in as a character? What are you going to get into? Have a variety of characters to play. — Milo Ventimiglia

I've never been turned down for a role because I'm gay. I'm a character actor, and that's probably why. I don't find Hollywood, in my own experience, to be homophobic ... But I do think the straight folks will continue to play the straight roles. — Jane Lynch

I was on the set of the first Powers pilot, and an actor of color came up to me and said, "When I was a kid, my friends wouldn't let me play Batman or Superman, because I wasn't their color. But they would let me play Spider-Man. And that's the difference." And I realized I had heard this story a hundred times from different people, but I wasn't there in my head yet. — Brian Michael Bendis

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

I suspect there isn't an actor alive who was able to truthfully answer his family's questions after his first day's activity in his future profession. — Simone Signoret

I did a show back when I was in high school - so I was about 17 - and it was the first time I was on stage. I never even thought about being an actor before that, but after that experience, I knew it was what I wanted to do. — Guillermo Diaz

What then is the difference between film and theatre? Or should one not rather ask: what are the differences? Let us be content wi th the reply that the screen has two dimensions and the stage three, that the screen presents photographs and the stage living actors. All the subtler differences stem from these. The camera can show us all sorts of things
from close-ups of insects to panoramas of prairies
which the stage cannot even suggest, and it can move from one to another with much more dexterity than any conceivable stage. The stage, on the other hand, can be revealed in the unsurpassable beauty of three-dimensional shapes, and the stage actor establishes between himself and his audience a contact real as electricity. — Eric Bentley

When people give you a writing assignment, they're asking what you think. That's the very opposite of being an actor. When you're an actor, no one wants to hear what you think. — David Rakoff

I love her [Kimberly Peirce]. Incredibly intense is a good way of describing her. Brutally honest. Really sharp. She's a director for actors. That's what she's best at, sitting down with an actor and just getting to the heart of what a scene is. And getting to the heart of not just what the scene is and the character is, but what you are, and how to build that bridge between the "me" and the character, and those emotions. — Joseph Gordon-Levitt

As an actor, to have achieved financial stability is amazing. But I always have this weird fear that I'm not going to get any more work; it's about not having enough money. — Paul Giamatti

It's nowhere near as intense as what I imagine an actor experiences backstage, but I feel a fluttering nervousness before a curtain goes up on a play. I mean, any play, anywhere - on Broadway or the Bowery or in a church basement. — Ben Brantley

I think a lot of people are very good, but I don't think anybody could do my rhythm. I was thinking, "If you want my rhythm" - and when I was writing, I was writing them for myself - "why am I watching another actor doing what I should be doing?" It was just a really unpleasant experience. — Jake M. Johnson

It started off for me as just wanting to be an actor and sort of resenting in a weird way being expected to write as well as be a comedian and an improviser. And then you think about it for a minute, and I smartened up and realized that the only way to sustain a career is to generate your own material. Or to be in control of your career as best you can. And in allowing yourself to do that it opens up a whole new world of possibilities. And then you're like "Oh, producing is a thing." — Rob Corddry

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

As soon as I suspect a fine effect is being achieved by accident I lose interest. I am not interested ... in unskilled labor ... The scientific actor is an even worker. Any one may achieve on some rare occasion an outburst of genuine feeling, a gesture of imperishable beauty, a ringing accent of truth; but your scientific actor knows how he did it. He can repeat it again and again and again. He can be depended on. — Minnie Maddern Fiske

I said, "I'm satisfied teaching the martial arts."
"Not me," Arnold responded. "Bodybuilding is just a stepping-stone to me. I plan on becoming a real estate mogul, and from there, I plan to get into the movies."
I had to smile as I said to myself, "How's he going to be an actor when he can hardly speak English? — Chuck Norris

I'm always drawn towards the darker stuff, because I think it's just a lot more interesting. But it's also good fun doing the comedy, and I think that's why 'Misfits' has been great in that way, as you get a really good balance. I think it's best to try and do everything as an actor, really. — Iwan Rheon

For the actor's wishes to be respected in terms of characteristics that your character's gonna have, you have to work with good and intelligent and talented stunt people that not only can carry weapons well but can also carry a personality. — Zoe Saldana

I think it's OK to play to your strengths, and if I have a quality of Englishness that people like, I won't hide that. I'm probably not going to play a junkie and that's OK because there are other people who will do it better. A view that's been held for a long time is that the best way to prove oneself as an actor is to play the grittiest roles out there. I don't agree with that. — Rosamund Pike

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

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

The longer you stay in the job that you do the more you learn about what those around you do. As an actor I've always nosed around apologetically about: "oh wouldn't it be interesting if I could do that?" I can't imagine not wanting to do this everyday. — Jason Bateman

Working with animals is always going to be tough because the animal doesn't know it's an actor. — Kit Harington

I feel lucky to be an actor because you always learn something from each part you play. — Rosemarie DeWitt

I'm not a comedian. I don't do stand-up. I don't tell jokes. I'm a comedic actor, and approach my work that way. The comedy comes through the character. — Eugene Levy

Unfortunately, when you're an actor you have to act. It's not like you can sit in your living room, your bedroom, your study or whatever and act with yourself. It requires having somebody to respond to. — Chris Sarandon

I'm a working actor so I never really pick a film because of a genre, and I don't really turn them down because of genre. Anything that's unlike the picture I just finished is always more interesting. — David Keith

I love the idea of animation just because it removes the actor from the character, and you can be anything. I've been devouring 'Adventure Time' and 'Archer.' I'd love to get my hands dirty on either of those shows. — Jack Falahee

I trained as an actor in London and went to Mountview Conservatory, as it was called then, and lived there for eleven years. — Josh Dallas

I was about 6 or 7, I would have said I wanted to be an actor and an artist. And that just kind of kept honing itself around film and getting closer to film. — Todd Haynes

... as a convention, you get up and walk to the window to make the audience believe that you're looking out. It's for the audience, not for you! And what it means to you is something emotional [...] If you went to the Actors Studio you'd spend six months seeing the snow before you could say, 'Look at the snow.' This takes a terrible burden away from the actor, who thinks he's got to see the woods and the snow. 'Give me my gun! I see a rabbit! Give me my gun!' "

Meisner sounds thrilled at the possibility of a hunt.

"That happens when you're still sitting there reading. Then when they put in the scenery you move to the window. Isn't that simple? How simple it is to solve the problem of seeing things when you know that it's all in you emotionally, and that walking to the window is only a convention. — Sanford Meisner

I saw several actresses play the part. I did not in fact, as far as I know, do anything that any of the other actresses did. I don't think actresses do that. I think that what we do is we see a role as a role, we don't see it as a person. We look at the role and think, 'What can I, as an actor, bring to that part? — Polly Bergen

My wife Ciera and I can stand face-to-face in our kitchen and stare into each other's eyes and talk for three hours without noticing that any time has passed. She is the kind of gal I spent a lifetime daydreaming about. She is an actor and a creative companion. — Jim Parrack

I think there needs to be more care taken for the actor. You know, we are not props! — Anika Noni Rose

My favorite actor is Sir Ben Kingsley - nobody is as good as him, in my opinion. I think he's so good as an artist. — Josh Peck

I don't want to be a movie star like Angelina Jolie. Nothing about being a celebrity is desirable. I'm an actor. It's bizarre to me that everybody's so obsessive. — Kristen Stewart

Suffice it to say, every actor works differently. Laurence Olivier would put on his costume and when the wardrobe was right, he was in character. That sounds superficial, but it's true, and look at the results. — Michael Mann

As an actor, what you dream of is being able to portray people that people empathize with and understand and really feel for. — Daniel Sharman

I'm an actor who they said was wrinkled and balding and everything else when I was in my early 30's. Most of the people who wrote that who thought they were younger than me are now bald and wrinkled. — Jack Nicholson

I wish it was a little easier for an actor to later go into singing and have it be accepted, but maybe I can still do it. — Zachary Levi