Actors Are Quotes & Sayings

Theatre is a sacred space for actors. You are responsible; you are in the driving-seat. — Greta Scacchi

The events we have passed through form a coherent pattern and the political actors who have shaped the world are rational
if not necessarily moral or decent
actors. Americans tend to think of its leaders as fools and knaves and of its enemies as psychotic. This seems to comfort us. While America's leaders might be knaves, they are not fools, and while our enemies might have utterly different moral values that are repugnant to us, they are far from insane. — George Friedman

When you're working on a film, it's not theater; you don't have a few weeks of rehearsal. A lot of times you are showing up on set, and you've never been to the place; you've never met the other actors you're working with. — Ben Schnetzer

I've seen productions where it feels like the actors are just tired and want to go home. That is one of the challenges doing theater - especially a long production - how to keep it alive for yourself and the audience. — Gillian Anderson

Most actors are very grateful for what is as opposed to what will be. You spend 98% of your time looking for a job, so when you get it, it's fantastic. — Brian D'Arcy James

I pick my actors primarily based on my gut-feel. They could be rank newcomers or established stars, but if I feel they'll do justice to my characters, they are on. I think Bollywood is now looking towards Kollywood for new faces, and, to my mind, Suriya will be a very successful crossover star because he's very versatile. — Madhur Bhandarkar

They're done by guys who have talked a good game and then have scrambled together the simulacrum of a drama, so actors are habituated to sometimes having to save a picture on the floor because it's usually part of their job, but they'd rather have a writer doing his job, so that they can do theirs. But I like nothing better than working with actors. — William Monahan

I love actors who are wonderful - like John Cusack and Russell Crowe, and wouldn't it be a treat to eventually direct them one day. — Renee O'Connor

Actors are part of a certain percentage of people on this planet who have an emotional vocabulary as a primary experience. It's as if their life is experienced emotionally and then that is translated intellectually or conceptually into the performance. — Mary McDonnell

All my good friends are actors, really. It's different when you have a family, but they're still the people I meet most often. My best friend is Ian Hart, but then I've known him since I was five. — David Morrissey

Most actors are starving. Most of us are walking around with a flashlight and tweezers looking for evidence. When you have someone that actually writes an acting role, it's rare. — Dylan McDermott

I think there are probably a handful of real character actors in this business. The rest of us are recycling. So now I'm Sam Malone the editor. I'm Sam Malone the billionaire. — Ted Danson

Norms appearing in the form of law entitle actors to exercise their rights or liberties. However, one cannot determine which of these laws are legitimate simply by looking at the form of individual rights. Only by bringing in the discourse principle can one show that each person is owed a right to the greatest possible measure of equal liberties that are mutually compatible. — Jurgen Habermas

When auditioning, I try to imagine that I'm the only person that they [directors] are seeing that day because it can be overwhelming, in the same sense that it could be overwhelming if you try to fulfil everyone's expectations rather than the people closest to you in the creative process, be it your director, or fellow actors and the writers. So, that's kind of it - I try to trick myself into believing that no one has ever gone there before. — Benedict Cumberbatch

You try to work with the director and your fellow actors to get somewhere, but other people are the judge of whether you hit that note right. — Ciaran Hinds

If I were only allowed to read or enjoy art or listen to music made by people whose opinions and beliefs were the same as mine, I think the world would be a pretty dismal sort of a place ... Most, probably all, human beings get to do awful things and believe things that other human beings think they should be burned for believing, and they get to do and believe wonderful things too, and artists, writers, musicians, creators, actors, are nothing if not human beings. — Neil Gaiman

Actors are crazy or we wouldn't be doing this. — Eileen Brennan

I love it when you ask actors, 'What are you Doing now?' and they say 'I'm between roles'. To be living 'life between roles' that's my favorite — Andy Warhol

As an actor, I have casting issues. I'm a minority. I don't have trouble making a living, but as far as being on the food chain of the pecking order of actors, I'm not at the top of it. With the jobs that I do, there are always control issues with directors and producers. — BD Wong

I know there are some actors who are just brilliant at improvising and brilliant at just being in the moment and doing it there and then. I'm not one of those actors. — Ioan Gruffudd

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

People have an idea that the preacher is an actor on a stage and they are the critics, blaming or praising him. What they don't know is that they are the actors on the stage; he (the preacher) is merely the prompter standing in the wings, reminding them of their lost lines. — Soren Kierkegaard

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

My heroes are guys like Tom Hanks, Leonardo DiCaprio, and Matt Damon. These are amazing actors with amazing careers that every actor should aspire to. I'm not saying I'm going to get anywhere close. It's not going to be an easy feat. I'm just in awe of their careers. — Dylan O'Brien

I admire actors who are bold and try to go forward over the cliche and propose something original to the audience. — Berenice Marlohe

Of course there are some actors that are better than others and performances that are better than others, but they're always embedded in the greater film. They are mediated through the work of so many other people: the director directs, the lighter sets the scene, the editors edit, the music gets put to it. — James Franco

I try not to have high expectations of people because it just sets you up for disappointment, but it's great to work with actors who are that talented and accomplished. — Famke Janssen

As an actor, I've been drawn to those characters that are further away from who I may be. — Kurt Sutter

A lot of the films now are more focused on the visuals than on the actors. I think all directors should go to drama school. — Eva Green

Actors are loved because they are unoriginal. Actors stick to their script. The unoriginal man is loved by the mediocrity because this kind of artistic expression is something to which the merest five-eighth can climb. — Patrick Kavanagh

I'm wide open to getting married, but actors are not easy people to date. You end up sharing that person with this other mistress that is their career. I very much like the traditional courtship method of making a date. That's what they do in normal places, but Hollywood's not normal. — Seth MacFarlane

Virtuality is different from the spectacle, which still left room for a critical consciousness and demystification. The abstraction of the 'spectacle' was never irrevocable, even for the Situationists. Whereas unconditional realization is irrevocable, since we are no longer either alienated or dispossessed: we are in possession of all the information. We are no longer spectators, but actors in the performance, and actors increasingly integrated into the course of that performance. Whereas we could face up to the unreality of the world as spectacle, we are defenceless before the extreme reality of this world, before this virtual perfection. We are, in fact, beyond all disalienation. This is the new form of terror, by comparison with which the horrors of alienation were very small beer. — Jean Baudrillard

Great actors are people who just meld into the part without calling attention to the fact that they are so-and-so doing this part. They may never become huge stars, but will always, in memory, stay respected actors. — Shekhar Kapur

Dash it all, she's an actress! Don't take her so seriously. Actors don't have opinions, my dear chap, still less do actresses. They have moods. Fads. Poses. Twenty-four-hour passions. There's a lot wrong with the world, dammit. Actors are absolute suckers for dramatic solutions. For all I know, by the time you get her out there, she'll be Born Again! — John Le Carre

You have to pretend to live in those clothes that they lived in, to live within the climate that they had then. You have to imagine with the help, obviously, of all the other technicians that are around - the writer, the director, the other actors. — Derek Jacobi

I don't feel that I was often compartmentalized as an African-American actor, yet I am fully aware of the plight that actors, directors and producers of color face in our industry. I choose to focus on being proactive in creating opportunities for myself and others while acknowledging that we are not playing on a level playing field. — Kim Fields

I like to take chances. The actors I admire are the ones who aren't afraid to make themselves nasty, bad or even goofy. I've never shied away from controversial characters. — Matt Dillon

All of the younger actors keep coming up to me and asking me where all of the land mines are because they know I've stepped on them all. — Burt Reynolds

There are two jobs. There is being an actor, and there is being a celebrity. Some people are really good at both. Some people are really good celebrities and terrible actors, and some people are really good actors and terrible celebrities. Hopefully, I am a really good actor and an OK celebrity. — Tim Daly

For actors, being successful is generally getting a job. If you can work a lot, you're really successful. If you work a lot on projects that are interesting and intelligent and great fun to be part of, then you're hugely successful. And I feel hugely successful. I can't believe that I get to be involved with the projects and the people I work with. — Anne-Marie Duff

Actors are pretending for you, but they're not lying. They are not putting on a guise instead of themselves. They are finding things inside that they have experienced. — Mike Mills

I was never the ingenue, so hopefully that'll make it easier to age and still work. I know a lot of actors who are really dissatisfied with where they're at even though some of them are huge stars and I feel like, 'Oh, my God, you're at the top.' Something interesting will come. It always does. I have faith. — Hope Davis

I think most of us have many personas inside us at the outset, but over time we lean to the one that is dominant and the others atrophy for lack of use. The difference with actors is that we are paid to become all the people inside us and to bring into us all the people we may have met along the way. Thus we remain instinctively aware of, unsettled by, curious about, empathetic toward, and eager to display all those potential beings we carry. Of all these, the empathy part is the most important and is, I believe, why actors - the good ones - tend to be open, progressive creatures: We are asked to get inside the skin of "other," to feel with "other," to understand "other." Being able to see from this "other" point of view gives actors compassion. — Jane Fonda

I actually don't hang out with any celebrities. My closest friends are old friends. And my real close friends, none of them are actors. — Denzel Washington

One of the best ways to change is to act as if you are the person you want to become. When you behave as if you are a different person, you change on a very basic level - even your physiology changes. When actors and actresses perform, their body chemistry is altered by the roles they play. — Bernie Siegel

On the other hand, we don't come to work with all of these social goals, nor are we directly trying to change the world and all of that. Our job is that we have these human characters, and it's our responsibility to play them truthfully and as human as possible. Jill has cast this impeccably. These actors nail it, even the non-Pfeffermans. It's ridiculous. — Jeffrey Tambor

There are so many brilliant, trained actors of color in America. If you just think about it, every year in the spring Julliard and NYU and Yale and hundreds of schools across the country graduate classes of trained actors, and in those classes are actors of color. So to say that there aren't enough actors of color is factually inaccurate. — Andre Holland

The real tough thing is working with actors. I'm a designer and used to working with artists, so there is some familiarity with the personalities that come up, but actors are their own animal. — Rick Heinrichs

At the end of the day, if you are an actor, you definitely know that you're just work-for-hire. — Malik Yoba

If I can still be successful making films and no-one will ever know me, then that would be great. Because we (actors) just like to do what we do. People who are doing it for fame, I don't know if they ever get really successful. — Channing Tatum

Actors use who they are to be someone else, but I would hate to ever think I'm playing myself. It's imagining being someone else that is the key motivating thing for me. So when people want to know about me, it makes me a bit unnerved. — Ralph Fiennes

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

Actors are always the pawns. They're the last ones in the food chain. — Patricia Mauceri

Once you consider the premise that Episodes I through III are not live-action movies with extensive special effects, but rather animated features with a few living actors rotoscoped in, many of the more common critical objections to the movies simply wither away. — David Brin

If my kids decide to be actors and really, truly love it and are passionate about it, then I would definitely want to help them along their way, but it's a tough business. — Josie Bissett

A lot of actors won't do things because they say it is boring when you are always working. A lot of them won't go on tour, a lot won't do pantomime. I think you should do everything. — Victor Spinetti

There are certain stars who are not actors. I don't want to be that type. — Natalie Wood

You act with your soul. That's why you all want to be actors, because your souls are not used up by life. — Stella Adler

I always tell Asian actors, especially Filipinos wanting to break into Hollywood, to study, study and study and show their best. I haven't stopped studying. There's an abundance of roles, and all you have to do is prove to them that you are good for the role. — Reggie Lee

Women are always murdered and maimed, and they're never given their rightful place as lead characters! And I think [creator Michael Hirst] has just written what should have been written a long time ago. There shouldn't be anything that different about Vikings, but there is, because there've just been so many shows that have not stepped up to the plate and given female actors and female characters equal footing. — Clive Standen

Part of the work is determining through what instrument you are playing. Actors are physical, olympian storytellers and we should be able to create entire landscapes with nothing. — Ajay Naidu

Acting itself is quite scary. Some people say that actors are show-offs, very egotistical and all that kind of stuff, but it is quite scary. — Michael Sheen

TV actors are doing great in Bollywood. We have our own market, our own fans, who love to see us on the big screen. — Mona Singh

I've always felt there are three sexes: men, women, and actors. And actors combine the worst qualities of the other two. — Peter Biskind

The quality of writing attracts me to films, also who the other actors are, who the director is, where it's being shot. Any or all of those things. But if the writing is really appalling, then the money had better be really good. Sometimes you say yes to something you wouldn't always do because you need the money. — Charles Dance

If the [actors] are working, and I have a dinner engagement, I don't do 20 takes. I do five takes and go home. I want to go to dinner. — Woody Allen

As actors you're always going to take certain roles that are in your comfort zone and take ones that aren't. — Matt Bomer

Ninety per cent of how you learn is watching great people. When you are surrounded by good actors it lifts your performance. — Natalie Portman

The radical rightwing pegs Hollywood as a leftist town, which is completely wrong. There are a lot of actors, writers, and directors who talk a liberal agenda ... but all the studio bosses, for as long as there have been studios, have all been as far rightwing as you can possibly imagine. — Paul Haggis

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

To go into more specifics regarding actors, whether they're from Korea or the U.S., all actors know if they are loved by the director. When they feel that love from the director, they respond by giving a great performance on camera. Also, everyone on set - the crew, the actors - they were aware of the film's message and its broad theme, so these big issues were never discussed on set. — Kim Jee-woon

All good actors are easy to work with. It's the ones that aren't very good who tend to be very difficult. — Tom Wilkinson

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

This is not the 19th century, where actors are expected to play completely opposite roles. We're not typecast, but we're brought in because somebody thinks that it's a good fit, so you make it a better fit. — Kate Mulgrew

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

It's great to write for actors when you know who they are. I think I prefer it. — Jason Gann

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

Actors are the flowers of the film, of the set, and of the director. The term 'Flowers of the Screen' holds a deep meaning. — Kim Jee-woon

When we are confronted with death, we become great actors. Great actors, nothing more. — Sait Faik Abasiyanik

There are actors in this town who made important careers for a long, long period just by taking the parts that Cary Grant turned down. — Louis Jourdan

On 'Y Tu Mama Tambien,' we started exploring shots that are longer, where the camera is moving around the actors, and there are no cuts, and you feel like you're there. — Emmanuel Lubezki

Some of us are interested in directors, but really the vast majority of us are interested in actors. You experience the films through the actors, so they're all locked into your imagination in some kind of layer of fantasy or hatred or wherever they settle into your imagination. — Danny Boyle

As actors, we're always asked to portray and react to these extreme circumstances, otherwise it's not interesting. They are agonizing things to think about. — Kristin Scott Thomas

There are some fantastic parts for older actors. — Ian McKellen

I have three older brothers, and each one of them has chosen one of my parents' education. Two of them are actors, and the third is a doctor as my mother is. — Bill Skarsgard

I think sometimes actors are drawn to good television because you have more time to sell it, you have more time to shape a character, and to tell a story, and that's really appealing. — Jamie Dornan

Animals are the best actors. They never lie, they're always present, and they listen. That's a lot more than a lot of actors can say for themselves. — Graham Phillips

I love working with Liev [Schreiber]. I've known him for a long time. I just think he is a master. Few actors are so self-possessed and so focused and so confident. — Peter Jacobson

Someone once told me that the most dynamic actors are people who have stories. People who have lived life. People with experiences. — Emmanuelle Chriqui

You develop relationships with people, and suddenly a family of actors and crew that you became so close to are now not around anymore. I'm not too sad about it because I got to move on to something else, but it's sad the way these things turn out. — Mark Pellegrino

Young actors are pretty fantastic. I can't even imagine doing stuff like that when I was a kid. — Donal Logue

I'm usually trying to react to what the actors are coming up with. And then the environment, and then the story. — Gus Van Sant

And to be honest, most actors are incredibly solipsistic. — Molly Ringwald

God is the poet; men are but the actors. The great dramas of earth were written in heaven. — Honore De Balzac

I think most actors are insecure and scared of rejection. — Alex Pettyfer

You can meet lots of actors who are in their own world and do their own thing, and they have no idea what's going on and they don't know anyone's name around them. — Richard Madden

Why do writers write? Why do actors act? Why do painters paint? It doesn't pay much, unless you're very successful. It's who we are. — Lori Lesko

I have so much empathy for these young actors that are 19 and all of a sudden they're beautiful and famous and rich. I'm like, 'Oh my God, I'd be dead.' — Philip Seymour Hoffman

When you begin to believe you have license because you are a special person breathing special oxygen, that's when you're in big trouble. That's the road to insanity. And a lot of people in the studios are like that. They believe that they are special. I do think actors are blessed, or cursed, with maybe a slightly heightened awareness, which you have to use. — Anthony Hopkins

Actors are as anxious about the state of audiences as aviators are over weather conditions. — Katharine Cornell