Acting Quotes

When the time came to make a decision about what do in life, I found myself thinking that acting was the thing I loved to do, so I applied to drama school. And then, I didn't get in - twice.

I don't know if acting is what I want to do for the rest of my life, it's just what I've, you know, ended up doing when I was little, and I've kinda grown up with it.

I went through this realization that acting, at its heart, is the ability to manipulate your own emotions.

Well, I'm never happier than when I'm acting.

In terms of work, obviously acting is such a job that is very in the flesh kind of thing. It's your work, but it's your life, in a way. You can get so mixed up.

You know, my parents have always been incredibly supportive. I'm an only child, so we're very close. There's just the three of us. They're exceptional parents but also great friends. My father was able to take his hobby, photography, and turn it into a beautiful career. So when they saw how much I loved acting, they were 100 percent behind me.

There is this immediate connection, this intimacy when you're acting because there's no room to be polite or shy. Also, as an actor I get to connect with women I've never met before.

I did a film once that I was killed in. It was a painful, horrifying day. It was a wonderful day from the standpoint of acting, but I was a wreck otherwise.

I've given up on trying to explain myself, or trying to set the record straight, or trying to get people to understand what I'm really like as a man, outside of my acting, outside of my job.

I can watch a movie and go, 'Oh, my god, that person is acting.' If you just listen to what the other person is saying, your response will always be genuine.

My professional acting life, stage and screen, has brought me public support, emotional fulfillment and material comfort. It has brought me together with fine people, good companions with whom I've shared the inevitable lot of all actors: flops and hits.

I've never been in the music industry, only acting.

I've always held to the belief, though, that people who do too much acting training always look like they're acting, you know?

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.

Producing is the hardest of the three because there is almost no closure. Every time you solve a problem, another one pops up. Directing is second, and acting is the most fun.

Yeah, I think the common denominator - and this is probably going to sound like Acting 101 - but the common denominator is belief in the character in the moment.

Our leaders are acting like lemmings.

It doesn't work that way, you know, because most parts that you think you'd do well, most other people don't. So they offer you something - The Avengers is a good example... I fitted into that because I came from that sort of background. It's not even acting.

Well every moment, every project is different. I took a very slow approach to acting, trying to really work with people I could learn from. And I got something different out of each experience.

I really enjoy acting. At home I can't even finish a sentence, and here I am reading these wonderful lines. I think it must be every housewife's dream, to be an actress part-time.

On so many levels, acting in film and TV is so much the sum of its parts, and somewhere in there, there's an alchemical thing that makes something happen or not - that makes something connect or not. Now, of course you want to make work that people see, but the enjoyment I get out of acting is playing characters.

I can see clearly now... that I was wrong in not acting more decisively and more forthrightly in dealing with Watergate.

I've made a kind of pact with myself where I said, It doesn't matter what it is as long as I'm acting.

It's great to have an acting job in the age of Reality TV.

What made me fall in love with acting, which is my life, was watching other people perform. It made me hunger to do that.

There's so much more to life than that, though I think that acting is fascinating because you can forget your own sorrow as you act and become somebody else.

The minute I start to talk about acting, I realize that I can't. You know, it's an abstract thing, a little bit mysterious even if you do it for a living.

Stylized acting and direction is to realistic acting and direction as poetry is to prose.

As a stand up, and often in acting, there is no place for the most intense feelings. Rage, genuine sorrow, naked hope... These things don't fit on a comedy stage and if you act you'll get to express them once in a while. Music is a place for the intensely personal.

I'd love to do acting, but it'd definitely have to be comedy. I can't do serious. It's completely beyond me.