Child Actor Quotes & Sayings

My dad took me for an audition once, to show me, 'OK, you want to be a child actor, this is what it's like.' I sang a folk song about donkeys on this West End stage with this big director, and there was a queue of 200 girls all singing 'Memory.' I was terrible. Terrible. — Emilia Clarke

If you're small and can speak clearly and you're a cute kid, that's the craft, really. The whole child actor thing can be dangerous sometimes. Other kids were taking piano lessons; I did ballet and acting. — Rose McIver

I'm not the kind of person who needs to be a mother no matter what. Life brings you people. Maybe I'll nurture someone who's not my child, like a friend, or an actor I'm working with who needs some love. — Heather Graham

It took me a long time to make that leap to being a grown-up and responsible adult because I carried on being a child actor into my late twenties. It's OK to be precocious when you're young, but when you're a man of about 27 or 28 and playing a 17-year-old in a TV show, it kind of prolongs your childhood. — Dexter Fletcher

I can't say I was unhappy as a child actor in films. I had a particularly wonderful time. — Roddy McDowall

I was never a child actor. I was a child performer. — Christopher Walken

The whole encounter was surreal. No one had mentioned cancer. I hadn't requested special treatment for Jacob. Yet he'd just nabbed a private meeting with an actor from his favorite movie. I would later ask Mike, the comic book store owner, what had prompted him to invite Jacob to the supper and a private meeting with Mr. Bulloch.
It was Jeremy at the door. He recognized something in Jacob. Jeremy
is a cancer survivor. — Mary Potter Kenyon

If you ever meet an actor who's the child of actors, they'll never tell you that they wanted to be a star. But what I did realise early on was that I just wanted to be in that tribe. — Jack Davenport

I was a child actor in radio, and there's not many of us left. — Dick Van Patten

Being an actor is an extension of telling a story and I loved story telling as a child. — Amanda Burton

As a child I wanted to be everything from a doctor, lawyer, flight attendant to an IT pro- fessional and could never make up my mind. I figured as an actor I'd get to play all these professions. — Lavrenti Lopes

If I had a child actor, I would wish for it to be in an Adam Sandler movie, because he just comes in and makes them so comfortable and is so brilliant with them and they all go home and they that they've got this special relationship. — Kate Beckinsale

When I was a child actor, I had the fear that I was going to be cast as the tree. — Vin Diesel

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

The more you do it, the more you learn to concentrate, as a child does, incredibly intensively and then you sort of have to relax. I remember the first film I did, the lead actor would in between scenes be reading a newspaper or sleeping and I'd think, 'How can you do that?' — Cate Blanchett

One of the reasons I'm an actor is because I was no physical specimen as a child. I wasn't athletic and didn't have any prowess in that regard. Growing up in Kentucky, most little boys were trying to get into sports, and it was very competitive, so that was not to be. But I did want to do something. — Michael Shannon

My interest in acting came from seeing Broadway shows on summer trips to New York as a child. It was the original production of 'A Chorus Line' in an easy tie with the first 10 -15 minutes of Dustin Hoffman in 'Tootsie' that hooked me on the romantic idea that the impossible, difficult life of a struggling actor was for me. — John Lloyd Young

To be honest, the core reason why I became an actor was that I didn't want to go to school. That's where it started. I hated opening my history books and my English books, but then, of course, you grow older. I went to film school in New York, and that's when you really realize that you have to grow up now. It's not child's play anymore. — Ranbir Kapoor

In the creative process there is the father, the author of the play; the mother, the actor pregnant with the part; and the child, the role to be born. — Constantin Stanislavski

That transition from child to adult actor is so incredibly elusive. The roles that were coming to me as a young adult were not that great, but I was taking them anyway to pay the rent. And the more bad roles in bad movies I took, the less anybody wanted me for a good role in a good movie. — Jackie Earle Haley

When I was a child, I dreamt of being a big star. I truly believed that I would be world famous someday, but that doesn't seem so important. What's important to me is getting to live my life as an artist, and making my passion my work. I have never wanted to be anything other than an actor and performer, and each day that I get to do that is a day well spent. — Jinkx Monsoon

Adolescence is a tough one to be a child actor. — Jodie Foster

Kids kill a show! It's, like, a fun concept when the character is pregnant, but then if a show runs for a while, I'm sorry, but it gets annoying when it starts to talk. You get a child actor in there, and unless that child actor is freakin' awesome, it's going to be annoying. — Eliza Coupe

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

It's very hard to find a good child actor. There are a lot of child actors out there, especially in America, and they're cute kids, but most child actors appear on sitcoms where their main role is to be cute and make funny little remarks. — George R R Martin

This industry should behave like a mother whose child has just run out in front of a car. But instead of clasping the child to them, they start punishing the child. Like you don't dare get a cold. How dare you get a cold! I mean, the executives can get colds and stay home forever and phone it in, but how dare you, the actor, get a cold or a virus. You know, no one feels worse than the one who's sick. I sometimes wish, gee, I wish they had to act a comedy with a temperature and a virus infection. — Marilyn Monroe

And then there was a long conversation, mostly one-sided, definitely biased toward the LA guy doing all the talking, which Reacher couldn't hear, and Chang's facial expressions could have launched a thousand competing scenarios, so he got no real guidance from her. He had a sense the guy worked hard on one thing after another, episodically. And in great detail. Maybe he was an actor. Or a movie person. The context was unclear. In the end Reacher gave up trying to construct a plausible narrative, and just waited. — Lee Child

My daughter's wanted to be an actress since she was six years old, but I didn't want her to go through the same experiences as I did as a child actor. — Ricky Schroder

I was a child actor, so when I started filming when I was five years old, it was a long time ago. — Hiroyuki Sanada

As a child, acting just seemed like a natural extension of my love of play - and if you've forgotten how to play, you shouldn't be an actor. — Simon McBurney

I don't feel I was ever a 'famous' child actor. I was just a working actor who happened to be a kid. I was never really in a hit show until I was a teenager with West Wing playing First Daughter Zoey Bartlet. In a way, that was my saving grace - not being a star on a hit show. It kept me working and kept me grounded. — Elisabeth Moss

I think it's important that when people are struggling, that you not run away from them if you love them. Kristen, I mean, I look at the room tonight, you know, Kristen Stewart and Claire Danes, Jennifer Lawrence, all these young women that I worked with who basically were child actors like I was a child actor. And then I feel very protective of them, because even though I think I have managed to get through the process relatively sanely, I have my scars, and I hope to be in some ways a member of their family that's out there protecting them. — Jodie Foster

My mom had an audition for a commercial when I was about two and a half, and I ran in crying and interrupted her. They thought I was cute so they offered me a commercial role. My mom was skeptical and a bit nervous about the child actor thing, but I was extremely bossy and convinced them I wanted to try it. — Mae Whitman

I have a career I am proud of as a child actor. I'm not running away from it or embarassed with anything I did. — Ricky Schroder

That said, let me add that Joan and I never want him to be a child actor. We both feel that it takes away their childhood and puts untold pressure on children. — Dwayne Hickman

At the time I was growing up in the business I was very well established within the industry as a child actor and as I grew up and turned into a teenager there was less and less work. — Morgan Brittany

I played soccer, and I played in a band, and sometimes I was able to do a movie. And my school would cooperate. It was a very easy way to roll into what later became my profession. It's more innocent. When you're a child actor in the U.S., it's a different thing I think. — Michiel Huisman

I've fondly dreamed of becoming the face of an important brand since I was a child, in the same way that others dream of becoming an astronaut. I dreamed of this as I first and foremost dreamed of becoming an actor and would look up at these huge posters of celebrities while driving along motorways or crossing under bridges. — Xavier Dolan

I'm sure it's not great fun for them, or for any parent, when their child says they want to be an actor, 'cos it's quite an uncertain business and it can be terribly hard for most actors. — Ewan McGregor

Some people manage to make that transition from child actor to adult actor seamlessly. But I felt that if I spent my whole life on a film set without taking a few years to do something else, all I would ever know about was film sets. — Anna Popplewell

You should be able to tell your child, "This is an actor. And she's older than Mommy!" — Rosie O'Donnell

The truth is that I've always wanted to be an actor, ever since I was a child. I used to see these English movies which were shown to us in our school every Saturday, and then I used to enact the hero's part in my head. — Randeep Hooda

I believe that I'm an actor to this day because of 'Star Wars.' I saw 'Star Wars' as a child, and I was completely enamored by it. — J. August Richards

If any child of mine becomes an actor I will turn in my grave. — Clark Gable

I started as a child, in this PBS series 'Voyage of the Mimi,' which led to driving down to New York for 'Afterschool Special' auditions, which led to moving to Los Angeles. I wanted to be an actor. But in L.A., I got into film technology, and I was building cheap editing systems and would edit my friend's acting reels. — Ben Affleck

I can now shed the child-actor thing, like the fat, and start a new career, because no one sees me as Dudley. — Harry Melling

We focus a lot on culture specifically at Twitter because of this spotlight, and of the fact that we don't want to end up like the child actor who found success early and grew up all weird and freaky. — Biz Stone

I can do everything with my language but not with my body. What I hide by my language, my body utters. I can deliberately mold my message, not my voice. By my voice, whatever it says, the other will recognize "that something is wrong with me". I am a liar (by preterition), not an actor. My body is a stubborn child, my language is a very civilized adult ... — Roland Barthes

I had always been interested in screenwriting, ever since I could write things down as a child. Obviously, I started as an actor, professionally, but screenwriting was always something that I had a great interest in. — John Francis Daley

After an 18-year career, I left the film industry, not wanting to become one of those child-actor cautionary tales. — Lisa Jakub

I wanted to be a child actor so bad that every day I'd beg my parents if I could audition, but my mom said, 'Not until you can drive yourself to auditions.' — Zooey Deschanel

I've never really felt like I was a child actor. Just an actor who happened to be quite young. — Saoirse Ronan

As a child actor, you experience a lot of depression and anxiety ... Yes, I went through depression, and it was not comfortable. Yes, I struggle with anxiety and being paranoid, trying to figure out who I am. — Keke Palmer

I didn't want to be a former child actor for the rest of my life, although in some ways I suppose I am. I am going to be that. — Mara Wilson

For a child actor, it's a matter of listening, reacting, and being able to put yourself in a new place without being scared. — Jena Malone

Dakota Fanning is a child, but she is a wonderful actor. I don't know what a child actor is. She's an actor who's a child. — Denzel Washington

I've always been quite mature because of the way my parents brought me up. They were very good at talking to me like a person rather than a baby, and I was around so many actors and directors from such a young age because my dad is an actor. I was more comfortable with adults rather than actually being an adult child. — Saoirse Ronan

I've always had a really developed sense of justice. As a child, I would rotate my dolls' dresses for fear that they might come alive at midnight and one of them would always have the best dress on. Whatever it was that made me worry about my dolls I suppose has paid off in my career because, really, an actor is all about empathy and imagination. And those are the cornerstones of activism. — Susan Sarandon

I ran away from three different boarding schools before joining a circus school, and eventually I became an actor. The only thing I learned at boarding school was never to send my child to one. — Vincent Cassel

Growing up an only child with a single parent is probably why I'm an actor. — Lauren Graham

I'd like to see myself married with a child and hopefully still involved in the entertainment business as an actor who is also able to write a bit and direct some projects. — Fred Savage

The hardest thing in acting is going from child actor to adult actor. It's taken me a long time. — Shia Labeouf

I was a child actor. I was this spaz kid diagnosed with ADHD, and I worked all the time. — Fergie

I started to study, because I knew I had to learn a lot about myself as an actor; you can't act the same as you did as a child. — Roddy McDowall

As a child, I was fascinated by the stories of Dickens acting out everything in front of the mirror as he wrote it down. Later, when you approach his work as an actor, you notice how sayable the dialogue is. — Harry Lloyd

It's difficult being a child actor. I don't think everything beautiful has to be exploited. Some things can be beautiful and left beautiful. — Ricky Schroder

I went on to host a kids' program from when I was around 10 until 15. In some ways I'm a child actor. — Michiel Huisman

People often say that you should never work with child actors. I think that's all wrong. Children have not had the imagination kicked out of them by life experience and adulthood. So, they still are very much alive with that kind of magical thinking which enables an actor to believe they're in these circumstances and make them real to you. — Nicolas Cage

That evening I sat across from Jeremy Bulloch and Jacob at the dinner table. I watched as Jeremy, who seemed to speak Jacob's silent language fluently, drummed his fingers up and down on the edge of the table, as if playing a piano. A delighted Jacob mimicked the actor's actions. My throat filled with tears. I met Ben's eyes across the table, where he sat straight with pride next to his son. He was enjoying the show just as much as I was. Jacob was in his element, interacting with an actor from his favorite movie. The other men at the table were part of the set: Mike, the owner of the comic book store, who had made the entire thing possible, and the Mandalorin Mercs, new friends of the little boy who had
become one of their own, a comrade in distress. — Mary Potter Kenyon

Let the child be the scriptwriter, the director and the actor in his own play. — Magda Gerber

There are certain expectations that are put on you as a child actor, but mainly it's just turn up and say your lines with a lot of energy and a cute smile. — Naomie Harris

It's like, to me, acting is like a child walking in the park, the better the actor, the greater the playground he has. — Logan Lerman

My family has always supported me completely and kept me grounded. I never got lost in child Hollywood actor weirdness. — Sara Paxton

I always wanted to be an actor. It's something I always secretly wanted. You know, I had the experience of being picked on as a child, and I would tell people, 'You're gonna be sorry when I'm famous!' And then I learned after they kicked the stuffing out me that you don't say that out loud. — DJ Qualls

A lot of people try to paint this child actor stigma, but I always looked at it as a great opportunity. — Zachery Ty Bryan

Years ago I met Richard Burton in Port Talbot, my home town, and afterwards he passed in his car with his wife, and I thought, 'I want to get out and become like him'. Not because of Wales, because I love Wales, but because I was so limited as a child at school and so bereft and lonely, and I thought becoming an actor would do that. — Anthony Hopkins

'Son of Frankenstein' is never talked about in the same tone as James Whale's 1931 'Frankenstein.' But it should be. It was Boris Karloff's last appearance in the Frankenstein series and stars Donnie Dunagan, then a child actor. — Mark Gatiss

I felt a gravitational pull to the material so that there's a certain element of acting that's not really necessary. I've really liked this in foreign movies before or I've observed others working with them and I've noticed that there's a method that goes on where the actors try and get the children, like the child actor, to interact with them in a real way. It seems like you're the adult trying to get the kid to fall in love with him. — Brendan Fraser

Going from a child actor to an adult actor is not an easy thing, and I was sort of lost in a no man's land for a while, trying to figure out who I was as a person, and going from a young actor to an adult actor. — C. Thomas Howell

At times, I feel sorry for kids who have succumbed in some kind of way to being a child actor. — Tia Mowry

I lived with this tremendous fear of failure because my father was a playwright and a director, and I think he did a couple of things as a child as an actor as well, and he ... he failed, basically. — Ben Affleck

I wasn't like a Hollywood child actor - 'I'm five! I can sing, I can dance, I can act! I wanna be a star!' — Alexander Skarsgard

Not a lot of people make that transition from child actor to bigger, better roles. — Moises Arias

Everyone has to pay their child support, and no matter if you're a Hollywood actor or anyone else, it's always a little bit more than you want to pay. — Ethan Hawke

An actor said recently that, unless you're a parent, you shouldn't play a parent in a film. I don't know who said it, but I disagree. I understand that maybe there are aspects that you don't understand, or maybe this actor or actress had a really strong recent experience with having their first or second or third born child. I don't know. As a dad, I get that. I get that there is no love like it. But, at the same time, love is love. — Colin Farrell

I didn't grow up as child actor. — David Boreanaz

I wasn't a child who wanted to be an actor. — Mary Badham

I guess I was a child actor. Acting was one of the things I did alongside going to school: I'd be playing guitar, I'd be playing soccer, and I would be acting in movies. — Michiel Huisman

I hate the stereotype of the pitfalls of the child actor. There are so many amazing examples - Natalie Portman, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Jodie Foster, Drew Barrymore - of people who have made it through. — Jamie Bell

For an actor to remain a child is rather important. It's a childlike, dreamy thing, acting, if you think about it. It's the sort of thing children fantasise about, playing cowboys and Indians in the street. I think that acting is just a highly refined development of that. — Michael Gambon

I was never really a child actor. I was working sporadically in indie films in Pennsylvania, but I was still living at home. — Charlie McDermott

A film director is not a creator, but a midwife. His business is to deliver the actor of a child that he did not know he had inside him. — Jean Renoir

An actor is no more than an assortment of odds and ends which barely add upp to a whole man. An actor is an interpreter of other men's words, often a soul which wishes to to reveal itself to the world but dare not, a craftsman, a bag of tricks, a vanity bag, a cool observer of mankind, a child, and at his best a kind of unfrocked priest who for an hour or two, can call on heacen and hell to mesmerise a group of innocents. — Alec Guinness

Having a child makes you strong and gives you chutzpah. It relaxed my attitude to the job; my center of focus shifted, which I think is very helpful, because even if you're not a very indulgent actor you spend a lot of time thinking about yourself. I don't think that is particularly healthy. — Imelda Staunton

I think of myself as an actor. The duty of an actor is to be able to impersonate anything - a child, an old man, a tree, a chair, a woman. — Barry Humphries

When you're a child you're able to assimilate so easily into any situation. You even start talking like the people you're around. I wasn't conscious that I was so good at that until I started to truly feel like an actor. — Vincent D'Onofrio

I never really had that father figure to look up to. I think that's the reason I'm so ambitious. I felt like I wasn't appreciated as a child so I wanted to prove my worth as an adult, as an actor. — Jesse Metcalfe

Having been a child actor, I remember how directors would trick me to get good performances out of me. I don't think you need to do that. — Asia Argento

I read so slow. If I have a script, I'm going to read it five times slower than any other actor, but I'll be able to tell you everything in it. It kills me that there are standardized tests geared towards just one kind of child. — Channing Tatum

Some shows suck, but I always - the show must go on. I learned it from my past as a child actor. The show must go on. You have to just keep on with it. — Jenny Lewis