Acting Quotes

Acting is like lying. The art of lying well. I'm paid to tell elaborate lies.

Nobody is more truthful when he's acting than De Niro.

At the end of drama school, I made a contract with myself: I'd try acting for five years. I was 26. I had already spent eight years working in restaurants and gas stations. So I had seen enough small businesses to understand that that's what acting is: a small business.

I think a lot of people, if they get the opportunity to do some acting, they think, 'I might be a star.'

I started acting when I was 13 in New York. Worked there for a couple years, then auditioned for a show there that was going to be filming here. Ended up coming out, getting the job and just staying.

The only thing of value I have in this life is my ability to tell a story, whether in print, orating, writing it down or having people acting it out. That's why I'm always hoping society never collapses because the first ones to go will be entertainers.

By the time I could have played football, I was already into acting and that's what I wanted to do.

I love the stage, I love the process of acting in theatre, but unfortunately, it doesn't pay the bills.

You can't think about how people will perceive you or your character. All you can do is focus on your work. The rest is up to the universe. I've been acting for 16 years. I've done 55 movies and, in all seriousness, there's maybe five that are good and the rest are crap.

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

In any case, his judgment and set of values, acting alone or through his assistants, determine not only what is gold and what is dross but the design of the history which he creates out of the metal. The historian decides what is significant, and what is not.

You have to be really open to your acting partners and believe in the story.

I was planning to go into architecture. But when I arrived, architecture was filled up. Acting was right next to it, so I signed up for acting instead.

Singing is a way of releasing an emotion that you sometimes can't portray when you're acting. And music moves your soul, so music is the source of the most intense emotions you can feel.

My first acting job happened by accident when I was really young. I was in fifth grade and my teacher saw an ad in the paper and took me to the audition after school and I got the part.

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

I was a kid who went to film school and fell into acting.

This acting was very hard work.

Acting? No, it is not for me. I would be terrible.

My mother worked for a woman, Maria Ley-Piscator, who with her husband founded the Dramatic Workshop, which was connected to the New School. My mother did proofreading and typing and stuff or her, and as part of her payment, I was able to take acting classes there on Saturdays when I was 10.

I like to act. I work for scale. I don't have an acting agent. I'm in the book.

I've been planted here to be a vessel for acting... That's why I'm really taking any part, regardless of how complicated it's going to be.

It is the habit of every aggressor nation to claim that it is acting on the defensive.

I've been training as an actor for six years. Nobody goes to acting school for six years. I mean, the college course is only four years! I absolutely trained.

I think when you take away all, like, the premieres and press stuff and all the special effects, then you just come down to the fact that it's all about acting, and I think that has been the best bit for me.

I think some people in their 20s really get it, that acting is about creativity and the work. They get their maturity from their work.

So when I told my parents I wanted to go into acting because I was flunking out of my first year of junior college, they were relieved that I had picked something other than joining the army. But I can't imagine how they had high hopes for me.

Well, I've been a professional racer for nine years. And if I could get it to pay me as much as acting, I'd give up all the rest in a second. Working in television, however, has made me accustomed to a certain lifestyle that I'd like to maintain.

No passion so effectually robs the mind of all its powers of acting and reasoning as fear.

On the stage he was natural, simple, affecting, 'Twas only when he was off, he was acting.