Acting Quotes

People do more important jobs than acting in film that should be recognised, but for some reason it's big money, so people are elevated in status. If I was a bus driver, I'm sure you wouldn't be interviewing me.

My parents' divorce left me with a lot of sadness and pain and acting, and especially humour, was my way of dealing with all that.

Acting is invigorating. But I don't analyse it too much. It's like a dog smelling where it's going to do its toilet in the morning.

I get to meet fantastic people, and I get to go through so many emotions. For me, I have a craving for that. When I'm acting, I feel great. It's not to be famous.

What's the difference between tough love and acting like a jerk?

Acting's fun, but life's more important.

I think, by and large, the level of acting is mediocre. When I go to the theatre, I get so angry. I don't go.

I never wanted to be a model. My modelling career was nothing but a stepping stone to my acting career and that's all I ever saw it as. A pointless rock in the river that has to be stepped on in order to get to the meaningful oasis of acting.

This nation loves singing and loves acting.

As soon as I started writing, other writers stopped wanting me acting in their shows - maybe they thought I was going to rewrite them.

The acting is something that will always be a part of my life, but the writing gives me a lot more creative freedom. You're a pawn in somebody else's chess game, whereas as a writer and as a director, you get to call the shots. And that's very thrilling.

I'm now learning how to distinguish when I'm acting and when I'm not acting - offstage as well as onstage.

Well, acting was just in me and I tried to avoid it. I didn't want to do what my parents did, you know?

I did theatre when I was nine, I think. Nine and ten, and that was just the beginning of my whole involvement in acting, my whole interest. I don't really remember it that well. But it was really fun. I mean, it was exciting just to be on stage in front of an audience. It gives you a different kind of rush.

Acting is great. You spend your whole life trying to get it right.

Periodically over the years I've always taken periods of time away from acting.

Acting allows me the freedom to let go, to be in the moment, to be spontaneous. I no longer have the fear of losing, of failure.

Acting engenders and harbours qualities that are best left way behind in adolesence.

A multitude of causes unknown to former times are now acting with a combined force to blunt the discriminating powers of the mind, and unfitting it for all voluntary exertion to reduce it to a state of almost savage torpor.

I love acting, but I want to explore other things.

Sitting at the table during Color Purple and looking up and suddenly realizing I was acting in front of Steven Spielberg, was pretty cool. It was pretty good.

My movies are unadorned, they're not particularly fancy, I think they're kind of workmanlike in some ways, focusing on the writing and the acting.

Listen, acting is not surgery, it's entertainment. You're doing something to hopefully move people, to make them laugh, to transport them. But actors are vulnerable, and the reason we're vulnerable is that we're always trying to recreate human behaviour.

I got into acting to avoid politics of any sort so I could remain in a fantasy world.

Literally, I think I've quit acting three or four times, only for a few days. Maybe for a few weeks.

We lived and breathed acting.

I remember once when I told Lindsay Anderson at a party that acting was just a sophisticated way of playing cowboys and Indians he almost had a fit.

My father died. It is still a deep regret to me this day that in choosing acting as my career I was forced to hurt him. He died too early to see I had done the right, the only thing.

The big difference with Juliette and the others in that film is that she goes beyond acting.

Faked enthusiasm is worse than bad acting - it is bad acting with the intent to deceive.