An 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 one benefit of having done all kinds of movies as an actor is, you learn the pros and cons of being tempted to do a really big movie because it costs a lot of money. — Ben Affleck

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

I didn't become an actor to make money. And I didn't become an actor to be famous - though people always gasp if you say that, as if it's unfathomable that an actor doesn't want to be a star. — Ruth Negga

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

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

When I was in my teens, I thought, 'Would I like to try and work hard at being an actor, or do I want to work hard at doing something musical?' Acting won out, but I do really enjoy those moments where I get to just belt something out. — Emilia Clarke

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 hate having to pose for photos. It's just so embarrassing. Everyone is expecting you to know what to do because you're an actor, but I haven't a clue. — Claire Foy

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

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

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

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

Normally when people ask me what I do I say I'm an actor, and that's what I always wanted to be and that's the way I approach work even when I'm directing it. — Simon McBurney

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 became an actor by accident. — Christopher Walken

Yes. My mother was and still is a Folk Singer. She was very involved in the political movements for Unions and Civil rights. She sang with Pete Seeger among others. My father was an Actor. — Vicki Sue Robinson

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 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

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

I'm not sure I'm the sort of actor people are hugely interested in finding out an awful lot about. — Iain Glen

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

Having been an actor, I always want to leave room for the actors to find their comfort zone, so I don't like to be too rigid in how I plan my shots. It's different if you have weeks to rehearse and you can rehearse on your sets or in your locations and you can plan that out with your actors, but in modern independent filmmaking, you don't really have that time. You have to have a certain level of improvisation. — Eric Balfour

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

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

As a person who came from a small town and had dreams of becoming an actor, I know what it's like to have no support system for what it is that you want to do. A lot of people think you don't have a chance. — Anika Noni Rose

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

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

I think I would have had trouble living with someone who didn't know what it was like to be an actor. — Pam Ferris

It's natural for any actor that segues into directing to be an actor's director. You know how to relate to the actors. — Omar Epps

I think of relationships as having a really safe place with someone where you are, and making an effort to show up everyday - to see them and feel seen, especially as an actor when you're already pretending to be other people all the time. It's an incredible gift to feel seen by one person; a culture of two. — Maggie Grace

I want you to understand the words. I want you taste the words. I want you to love the words. Because the words are important. But they're only words. You leave them on the paper and you take the thoughts and put them into your mind and then you as an actor recreate them, as if the thoughts had suddenly occurred to you. — Daws Butler

When I come up against a director who has a concept that I don't agree with, or maybe I just haven't thought of it or whatever, I'd be more prone to go with them than my own because I want to be out of control as an actor, I want them to have the control, otherwise it's going to become predictably my work, and that's not fun. — Jack Nicholson

An actress friend of mine shared a great trick. She told me to stick my tongue behind my teeth when I smile to keep from over-smiling. If you smile without doing it, sometimes your gums show a little too much. It's an actor's trick! — Jessica Chastain

I don't want to be a star. If you have to label me anything, I'm an actor - I guess. A journeyman actor. I think 'star' is what you call actors who can't act. — Paul Muni

I was sick and tired of being an English actor who did a lot of American movies because I was cheap and good. — Daniel Craig

Ill never be as good an actor as I want to be ... but I'll be good. — Steve McQueen

The mistake people that want to be actors make is to move to New York or L.A. right away. But it's like ... go act somewhere first. Be an actor. A story is a story, and an audience is an audience, no matter where you're doing it. — Conrad Ricamora

It's very difficult for me to speak about being an actor. — Catherine Deneuve

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 do this profession. I'm an actor. And it is, for me, an opportunity to meet people. — Gerard Depardieu

In Mexico, theater is very underground, so if you're a theater actor it's very difficult to make a living. But it's also a very beautiful pathway to knowledge and to an open education. — Gael Garcia Bernal

I don't think I can call myself an actress yet. I just don't think my skill level is that high. I hope that with every job it gets better. But until I'm good, I can say I'm trying to be an actor, but I don't think I've completely made it. — Keira Knightley

What happens so often as an actor is that you retain the information about the scenes that you yourself shot and you obsess over certain scenes that you found the most challenging or interesting. The rest of the film kind of falls away in your memory or it fades a little bit. — Olivia Wilde

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

Sometimes the odds are against you-the director doesn't know what the hell he's doing, or something falls apart in the production, or you're working with an actor who's just unbearable. — Jessica Lange

I'm an actor; I have made my living by acting, and I almost think I owe it to the public to express my feelings and not as a character on a screen but as myself. — Kirk Douglas

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

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

I write in order to understand the images. Being what my agent ... somewhat ruefully calls a language playwright, is problematic because in production, you have to make the language lift off the page. But a good actor can turn it into human speech. I err sometimes toward having such a compound of images that if an actor lands heavily on each one, you never pull through to a larger idea. That's a problem for the audience. But I come to playwriting from the visual world - I used to be a painter. I also really love novels and that use of language. But it's tricky to ask that of the theatre. — Ellen McLaughlin

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

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

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

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

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 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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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 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 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

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