Acting Quotes

Now that I've got some films under my belt, I have the courage of my convictions regarding acting. It gives me a leg to stand on.

I learned much more about acting from philosophy courses, psychology courses, history and anthropology than I ever learned in acting class.

Acting is like roller skating. Once you know how to do it, it is neither stimulating nor exciting.

Acting is such a personal thing, which is weird because at the same time it's not. It's for the consumption of other people. But in terms of creative outlets and expressing yourself, it's just the most extreme version of that that I've ever found. It's like running, it's exertion.

I've had a lazy career. Sometimes one film a year, sometimes none. I'm walking around in the street and doing this other thing, living, that I'm much more interested in. I just do some acting on the side.

One of the things about acting is it allows you to live other people's lives without having to pay the price.

Absolutely not, because in acting I've found a domain that suits me perfectly. And that is so utterly rare.

When I get to my deathbed, I don't want to take my last breath and say, Well, how glorious. I've left the world my acting credits. I won't even think that.

Television and film acting is really fun because you are working with other people and you are not completely responsible for the outcome of the project.

Acting kind of chose me.

I stumbled into acting and just loved it. I deferred law school-and I'm still deferred.

Acting is a life experience. I'm always learning things when I'm making a movie. So the fame part of it is fine when you consider what you get out of this job.

A large part of acting is just pretending. You get to work with these other great make-believers, all making believe as hard as they can.

I get so tired of people acting like, you know, black men and women never help each other, never support each other.

I couldn't get an acting job to save my life when I moved to L.A.

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!

I'm curious about other people. That's the essence of my acting. I'm interested in what it would be like to be you.

The only time I commit to conspiracy theories is when something way retarded happens. Like Lee Harvey Oswald acting alone.

I remember being a little kid sitting in the living room with my brother and some friends from around the neighborhood, and I would sit at the piano and as they were running around the room doing different things and being silly, acting out, I would actually play the score for it - the music that went along with it.

Acting is really scary, but it's also challenging, fun, hard work. There's always an element of improvisation with every actor, even when something is really scripted.

It is precisely as though I were possessed by some other spirit when I enter on a new task of acting, as though something within me presses a switch and my own consciousness merges into some other, greater, more vital being.

There's only two givens with choosing acting as a profession: one is you will always be unemployed, always, and it doesn't matter how much money you make, you're still always going to be unemployed; and that you have no power.

I have a lot of great distractions outside of acting.

Man is a make-believe animal: he is never so truly himself as when he is acting a part.

When I did make the decision to focus on acting, I think my mother was just relieved for me that I had finally started to focus.

The foundation for film acting is stage acting.

I was studying acting in New York, and wasn't being hired by anyone to do anything other than to work in an Oriental rug warehouse.

What happens on 'Mad Men' in terms of the acting and the writing and the directing, it's superior. And yes, it has tremendous cache and buzz because it's become iconic, but it also deserves all the kudos and the awards as well, because it's a beautiful show to look at.

I don't get nervous when I'm directing a play. It's not like acting.

You spend enough time on set as an actor and it's great when a director was at some point an actor or understands acting. They're able to finesse performances out of you that a lot directors can't get.