Camera Acting Quotes & Sayings

A radio play actually ended up being the first acting job I ever had. A lot of times when I'm on camera, I'm playing characters that are more like myself, and I don't get to do a lot of real character work. But when you're doing animation, you are the very epitome of colorful characters. I think I'm just really into make believe. — Virginia Madsen

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

I never was very good at acting. I never was very good at playing the role. Because the true pretending can only come off in our genuine awareness of the real. Only those of us with the most secure grasp on the real can pretend; can really be good at the performance. And of course I didn't know what was real; I only knew the camera was always on. — Chris Campanioni

I do tend to like movies that challenge me professionally. That's mostly on a smaller scale, when you have one or two or five actors, and it's all about the acting and not the camera. — Ayelet Zurer

I love acting; I don't want to give up on it at all, but it would be nice to step behind the camera once in a while as well. — Lee Norris

I'm really shy with my acting when it's off, because the camera gives me an excuse to be in character, whereas otherwise I would just feel like an idiot. — Brendan Fehr

I think I've found a purpose in acting; it's something I truly love and truly enjoy. It makes me happy. It makes me understand more about life, in front of the camera, than what I'm living beyond the camera. — Ranbir Kapoor

That was the beginning of modern acting for me. You don't have to tell a camera everything. It gets bored if you do and wants to look elsewhere. — Stephen Rea

What motivates every other decision artistically or technically is the acting. This is what motivates everything. Never can a camera move be incompatible with the emotion of the actor at that moment. The movement, the style, the atmosphere, everything is dictated by the actor. — Xavier Dolan

In films, you are a commodity. You are a look, something that the camera really likes, something that has struck an audience in a certain way. It's not really so much about transforming yourself the way actors do onstage. I think there's a difference between the skill of acting in movies and onstage. — Brooke Adams

The camera lens or the television camera is still just a proscenium arch. And as a great old character actor once said to me, wherever you're acting, you reach up and take hold of the proscenium arch, and you pull it down around your shoulders. — Robert Preston

I always thought acting was all lights, camera, action. It's a job; you have to do your job correctly. — Corey Haim

It was extremely useful to grow up in front of the camera. It gives the camera no significance. I think it helped me have perspective on things. The attraction that Hollywood can have, I feel like I'm over that. Instead I just concentrate on acting. — Giovanni Ribisi

I couldn't be 'Johnny' in front of a camera in acting jobs and behind the camera I like to be 'Michael.' With directing, you can't do it by halves. There's a lot of reflection, and I have found that I, as 'Michael,' thrive on it. It's lovely coming home and feeling that stuff from a day's work as myself. — Johnny Vegas

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 grew up in New York, so I fell in love with acting on a stage, not in front of a camera. — Kerry Washington

Learning about acting for camera is really quite exciting to engage with and deal with. — George Blagden

I do very little on-camera acting, so within a phrase as a voice actor you have to know how to convey when someone is 95 years old or 19 years old ... When I was the lead singer of the California Raisins commercials there was a traditional actor there as well and he would do all these body movements without saying anything because he was "acting." And the only acting the microphone picked up on was silence. — Jim Cummings

That first year at Universal was a big blur and, naturally, I thought they were wasting me. I didn't realize at the time that I was learning my craft and acting more easily in front of the camera. — Kent McCord

My dad was always taking photos of us at home, and even on set - he'd bring us along and stick us in the photos in the background. It was almost the beginning of acting for me, like, 'Hey, you go over there and play basketball in the background, and don't even think about the camera.' — Ansel Elgort

When you're modeling you're actually acting for the camera and the photographer. It's more fun, too because there are no lines to memorize. — Cindy Margolis

But actually my dad is a very talented director and not just his use of shots and camera, but he's very good with actors and he knows acting well. It's great to see him do that and be really good at it and he's been doing it for a while and he certainly knows how to make movies, and little movies I guess for a television show, and he's going to come back in November to direct a second episode, which I'm really excited about. — Emily Deschanel

I still enjoy acting. I love the moment in front of the camera, but it's all the other moments that I don't enjoy. The 'business' aspect of it, the gossip. — Jennie Garth

The upsides of acting in things is mostly getting your hair done and having people give you clothes. So as long as you can have a little bit of that in your life, then it's just as delightful to be behind camera. — Tina Fey

To be honest, I don't see myself acting forever. I just can't imagine myself being a 70-year-old man fighting for roles. I would love to do small parts in my friends' movies or things that I'm directing myself. I do envision myself behind the camera as I get a little bit older. — Dave Franco

The first time I saw 'Private Practice,' I was hooked. The camera work is captivating, the acting is the-best-of-the-best amazing, and each storyline is so interesting and different. — Rachel G. Fox

Early on, someone had told me, 'You know, the camera can always tell when you're lying.' And, Jesus, that intimidated me. 'The camera can always tell? How am I going to do this?' Until one day I thought, 'Wait a minute, acting is lying. Acting is all about lying.' — Michael Douglas

I was never interested in becoming an actor. I was directing videos. I was never into acting. I was into shooting music videos. I've only ever been behind the camera. Never in front of it. — Barkhad Abdi

When I was an actor in some movies a long time ago, I was so curious about all the camera movements - why is the camera placed here, and why does it move like this? And why the set and the background, the color? It's a lot of questions for me to ask, because I was so interested, not only in acting, but also the whole process of filmmaking. — Stephen Chow

There is a bit of acting involved when you get in front of a camera for a video. Even when you perform onstage, you're putting on a show. — Aaliyah

I've always thought that when anyone receives an award for acting they should always thank their fellow actors, because the only way you're going to deliver your best performance is when you have other good actors on the set supporting you and being very present for you even when the camera is not on them. — Halle Berry

I love being on stage or in front of the camera. My work brings me a lot of joy. It helps me figure out who I am. I'm really lucky that I get to make a living at acting. — Dana Delany

There were moments - I would be daydreaming - I would imagine scenes, even if there wasn't a camera around. In my head, I was acting. — Eric Cantona

I love acting. Acting's always been my first love. I grew up watching multi-camera television shows ... And I thought I would absolutely be in for that. — Seth Green

Sometimes you're watching a great film actor, and if you stand 10 feet away from them, you're like, 'God, they're terrible. They're not doing anything.' And then you see the close-up, and it's so nuanced, and so much expression is happening. They were acting for that camera and for no one else. — Finn Wittrock

I was mainly a stage actor. I found film acting mechanical, because it was so technical - there was so much technique with the lamps and the movements of the camera. — Erland Josephson

With directors, some have a kind of in-built ability to just know how to work with actors and get the best out of actors, and some don't have a clue about acting. I think it'd be a good idea if directors put themselves in front of the camera, or even went on a six-week drama course, just to know a little bit about what that feels like. — Paddy Considine

Making a pretty picture, an image, is a completely different thing from acting to camera. — Gemma Chan

Acting in 'Command & Conquer 3' called for me to interact with the player and to look directly into the camera, which is a big no no when filming for TV or film. — Grace Park

I'll never stop acting, but music is another passion of mine. I just love creating projects in the entertainment field and performing onstage or in front of a camera. — Katherine McNamara

I've read all of Shakespeare and practiced a lot of lines ... I am going to do Juliet first. Don't laugh. What, with what makeup, costume and camera can do, my acting will create a Juliet who is 14, an innocent virgin. — Marilyn Monroe

When I'm acting, I'm two beings. There's the one monitoring the distance between myself and the camera, making sure I hit my marks, and there is the one driven by this inner fire, this delicious fear. — Jeanne Moreau

When I get in front of a camera all my fears and my inhibitions just go away. As a model, I feel that I am acting, too, playing different parts and showing different facets of myself. — Marisa Berenson

There was something else that [Christopher] Reeve told me privately, off camera, and it made me grin. While he was lying in the hospital, just becoming conscious with tubes connected to all parts of his body, a doctor in a white coat came in and with a Russian accent, commanded: "Turn over!"
Are you nuts? Reeve thought.
I said: 'Turn over!'" the doctor repeated.
As Reeve was about to answer "the imbecile", he realized there was something familiar about the man in the white coat. He wasn't a doctor at all. He was Reeve's old buddy from acting school at Julliard, Robin Williams. Reeve waited for a breath, and almost choked with laughter. He realized, he told me, "If I can laugh, I can live. — Barbara Walters

My acting stopped being about disguise and became about truth which suits the camera, so my film career took off when I came out. — Ian McKellen

When you do a four-camera sitcom, everything is a little schtickier. It's not necessarily that you pick up bad habits, but there is just a very specific way of acting that you fall into on those kinds of multicamera shows, and you have to break those habits when you go in to do other things. — Mila Kunis

I grew up around horses, but acting and riding on camera is a whole different thing. — Emilia Clarke

In my years of acting, the one thing I was never able to do convincingly was to laugh on camera. Fake-laugh. — Paul Feig

I came rather late to film. I've done an awful lot of theater before - before I discovered the camera, you know, seeing everything, requiring much less acting and - and much less presentation, much less projecting, more just being. — Ian McKellen

I had started off, before I ever got an acting job, working at Robert De Niro's Tribeca Productions as a reader. I was always interested in that side of the camera. — Mira Sorvino

With film, you have very limited tools to convey subjectivity - voiceover, the camera's point of view, good acting - but even the very best actor in the world is crude by comparison with what you can do in a written paragraph. — William Boyd

I like acting too much and it's too, I'm just too busy doing that and I'm too hungry for it, to get behind the camera. I mean, unless I could act in it, too. I don't think I've got the right brain. I'm too disorganized. — Rachel Weisz

I did this class when I first moved to California. It was a 'Kids on Camera' class up in the Bay Area. That was good for just getting me excited in acting and everything. Then once I started working down L.A., I just stuck to my acting coach, and she helps me prepare with auditions and that sort of thing. — Bridgit Mendler

At least when you're acting you can be someone. In front of the camera you have to be yourself. And who am I? — Stephen Rea

The MTV thing is the thing that I will always tip my hat to because that was like my acting class and how I got comfortable in front of a camera and how I kind of created my own thing. — Pauly Shore

My first time acting for camera really was for Steven Spielberg in War Horse. I was trained in theater and I was actually working in theater at the time. I had a small role with the Royal Shakespeare Company, which is a huge prestigious theater company back in England. I honestly thought that was as good as it got. — Jeremy Irvine

I have been taking classes and I'm familiar with stage, but I'm not as familiar with acting on camera. — Kevin Richardson

You're used to having a camera in your face when you're playing a character - it's like having a mask on. But when you have to be you, you're so worried you'll make an idiot of yourself. Acting is a kind of escapism. — Sheridan Smith

My background is a small town with no movie theater. So ... I always pictured myself onstage. I went to acting school and learned all the skills. I left early because I did my first movie and discovered that I really loved the minimalistic work with the camera. — Franka Potente

I prefer directing to acting. There is huge freedom that comes from being behind the camera. It brings a lot of responsibilities as well, but is intensely rewarding. Particularly the chance to help draw out the best in young actors. — Angelina Jolie

After 2000 or so, I started to realize I wanted to be doing something else. I didn't want to be in front of a camera. I was frustrated. I didn't think I would stop acting, but I didn't want to be seen. — Ben Affleck

My acting technique is to look up at God just before the camera rolls and say, 'Give me a break.' — James Caan

I don't like acting; not in front of the camera. — Spike Lee

With film acting, and often when the camera comes very close, you just have to think about something and the camera will pick it up. — Ruth Wilson

It's difficult, if not impossible, to get away with anything false before the camera. That instrument penetrates the husk of the actor; it reveals what's truly happening - if anything, if nothing. A close-up demands absolute truth. It's a severe and awesome truth — Elia Kazan

This is going to sound cheesy, but with acting there are so many tools. When you're on camera, you're using all of it. You're using the voice, you're using your body, you're using wardrobe, all of it, but it's funny, once you take all of those things away, you realize how much you rely on the physicality. — Jennifer Stone

I'm very in love with the fact that the camera is revolted by acting and loves behaviour. — Ben Kingsley

Acting, to me, is being given the freedom and ability to play, and that's - that's what I love most about it. I feel very comfortable in playing, whether it be in front of a camera or on stage. — David Wenham

I feel like God has moved me into a different way of doing things. I teach basic on-camera acting class called Acting 101 ... In my classroom, the students get every ounce of encouragement and craft and anything I'm able to give them.We have some rules. We don't take the name of The Lord in vain. We don't use foul language when we mess up on camera ... There's a climate of safety ... They feel very protected. — Patricia Mauceri

We [musicians] are comfortable in front of the camera doing music videos, and it's almost a form of acting when we're doing music videos. We're acting out our own thoughts and what we've written down on paper. — Ludacris

I'm not a photographer, so I didn't get into F-stops or ND filters or background, foreground, cross-light, all that stuff. But I was interested in the camera and the lenses. That's the world that I'm moving in, in terms of acting and giving a performance. — Keanu Reeves

Acting is everything to me and it's at the core of every decision. Whatever importance costumes, details, lights, camera, dialogue and everything else have, if the acting is bad, cheap, or overdone everything else is just gone. — Xavier Dolan

Everything about acting is a challenge. I'm self-conscious. You couldn't do anything to cause me to be more self-conscious than to stick a camera in my face and have 60 people standing behind it, waiting for me to perform. — Billy Campbell

I went to college and got my degree in acting, but because it was all theater, I really consider my first couple years on 'Mad Men' as amazing training for working in television and for acting on-camera. — Gillian Jacobs

I just love the whole art form of acting, of being in front of a camera and playing different things. Not that I would ever say I'm the greatest actor in the world, but I am capable of playing different kinds of roles that emotionally I could get into. — Andrew Dice Clay

The play is the source, it is orchestrated with words. In a movie, you are not dealing with as much as that. There are machines and wires. When you're acting for a camera, it keeps taking and never giving back. — Al Pacino

When I'm acting, I have zero control, and it's the scariest thing anyone can do in that field because, you know, your face is always the one that's out there in front of the camera, and any number of things can happen to you once you've done your work. It can be edited badly, it can be distributed badly, or it can not be distributed at all. And I've certainly experienced that; every actor has. — Amber Tamblyn

This acting's serious! And I really respect those actors. It's a tough business to be able to be something you're not and be natural and convince people on camera. — Michael Strahan

Modeling teaches you to be completely conscious of the camera. Acting is being totally unconscious of it. — Phoebe Cates

I've wanted to do some sort of acting stuff down the line, but modeling is a good way to get comfortable in front of the camera. — Patrick Schwarzenegger

If you spend any amount of time doing media analysis, it's clear that the most frenzied moral panic surrounding young women's sexuality comes from the mainstream media, which loves to report about how promiscuous girls are, whether they're acting up on spring break, getting caught topless on camera, or catching all kinds of STIs. Unsurprisingly, these types of articles and stories generally fail to mention that women are attending college at the highest rates in history, and that we're the majority of undergraduate and master's students. Well-educated and socially engaged women just don't make for good headlines, it seems. — Jessica Valenti

Acting is one element in a film. Directing is sort of the painter using all of those elements - sound and music and camera and putting it all together. And that can be fun and exciting. If you fail, it's incredibly upsetting - much more upsetting than when you're an actor. But when you succeed it's incredibly, incredibly exciting, so I like the risk of it all. — George Clooney

"Dukes of Hazzard" or something you could, you know, that your work is going to be made up of that - episodic television shows. Not that I got many of them, but that was where I, but actually oddly enough though, they were teaching camera terminology at the same time in this acting class so I actually was able to understand what rack focus and whip pan and all that stuff meant. — Quentin Tarantino

So anyway, I've learned a lot about myself just in terms of acting but just work ethic and interesting things like full-page monologues or talking straight into camera, which I had never gotten to do before. — Emma Stone

Even dramatically how you position some person, the depth, the existence is different than a flat image even though by itself it has depth, we create the illusion of depth. For example, some of the shots I have to stay closer to the actor because it's a young actor, I like it closer for some of the shots. I watch 2D scenes next to the camera, then when I go back to my station and watch it in 3D I have to go back and reduce his acting, he has to shrink a little bit because he peeks out more. — Ang Lee

The camera does not like acting. The camera is only interested in filming behaviour. So you damn well learn your lines until you know them inside out, while standing on your head! — Ben Kingsley

Acting time is like flight time: You can work on a simulator, you can rehearse, but unless you're really in front of the camera or on a stage - that's when you really learn how to work it. — John Kapelos

I'm glad I took the leap away from acting into going behind the camera because it's much more satisfying - I love acting and I still do, but it's much more satisfying to be able to make the stuff. — Paul Feig

Acting's all about the confidence you exude, especially on film. I mean, nervousness isn't attractive in anyone, but a film camera will seek it out and punish you. — John C. Reilly

You learn a lot about acting and being physical and being on stage, but there is technical stuff on camera that you can't learn until you do it. — Finn Wittrock

I've dealt with a few method actors, and I don't know if should say this, but I think it's a bunch of nonsense. I think it's film acting and you just have to be on when the camera is rolling. — Natalie Portman

I've been acting since I was 2 and have always been on camera but doing a video is different because when you're acting, you pretend the camera's not there and you just do the scene and with a music video you're right in the camera so it feels weird sometimes. — Corbin Bleu

It's whether they have a vision and whether they're able to communicate it. The best director is just someone who gets over-excited about doing it - they don't even have to know much about camera or acting. — Colin Firth

When someone's acting for a scene, they can fool the camera. But in everyday life, unless you're watching and censoring yourself every minute, or spending all your time in the company of ladies, what you feel is bound to show in your eyes. — Cesar Romero

I went from off-off Broadway. I would direct plays in Baldwin Hills. Almost Tyler Perry-like, really trying to express myself in that and not really knowing how to, knowing acting in story, but not really knowing how to technically hold a camera. — Lee Daniels

In Hitchcock's eyes the movement was dramatic, not the acting. When he wanted the audience to be moved, he moved the camera. He was a subtle human being, and he was also the best director I have ever worked with. — Bruce Dern

You know, everyone says, 'Modeling and acting are so similar' ... they say, 'It's so natural for models to become actresses because they use the camera.' I don't think of it in that way. — Gisele Bundchen

I remember hearing someone say that good acting is more about taking off a mask than putting one on, and in movie acting, certainly that's true. With the camera so close, you can see right down into your soul, hopefully. So being able to do that in a way is terrifying, and in another way, truly liberating. And I like that about it. — Annette Bening

You can be in an acting class all you want, but you don't fully learn until you get off that stage and in front of a camera. — Nicholas Lea

I do love acting the two seconds that you are in front of the camera - and this is going to sound like I'm complaining, and I don't want that because I'm blessed to even have a job - but there is a lot of down-time when you're just sitting in your trailer. — Rene Russo