Acting Quotes

I'm more interested in knowing my cues than my lines. If you know what your cues are, then you know what your reaction is going to be to them. Acting is about reacting, and if I can kind of purely react, that's easier for me.

I didn't really like modeling; it was fun but I always wanted acting.

Acting is an art and a science and there is more to me then that young blonde kid.

I love the acting community at Cambridge. It's really quite committed and serious, since the days of Derek Jacobi and Ian McKellen right through to Emma Thompson and Hugh Laurie.

You need to become a good listener. As you're working, you hear someone else's lines and how you absorb them becomes your acting.

With acting I am being led by the script, other actors, the director, etc. But with songwriting I feel it is much more self reliant and allows me to be in the creative experience without being as dependent on others.

But no, I love acting, it's a wonderful job.

But acting just sort of happened and I found that I loved it. It was such a challenge.

I never took acting classes, but I knew I could do it based on the skill with which I lied to my parents on a regular basis!

The most important thing in acting is honesty. If you can fake that, you've got it made.

Even as far back as when I started acting at 14, I know I've never considered failure.

I've always enjoyed acting. When we were younger, my sisters and I would put on plays for our parents.

I like acting for myself as a director. I act and I know that I'll have a chance to have some say in what gets used and that I'll be able to give myself enough takes and be on the same page as myself about how the scene should play.

The Irish Catholic side was married to the life of an actor and I found out acting could be a form of prayer.

At this point I have no interest in returning to wrestling. I am pursuing my acting career. But I never say never. I enjoyed the three years I was in the wrestling industry.

The first acting thing I ever did was my senior year I decided not to play a sport in the Spring and, in that Spring B.J. Novak who went to school with me, asked if I'd be in this show that was a parody of all the teachers in the school, 'sure!' That was the first acting thing I did.

It was in high school that I first became interested in acting. We put on lots of plays.

Acting, at least for me, is very unreal, and when I'm doing it, I actually feel embarrassed.

I came to acting in a very circuitous way.

I got involved with an acting school and studied for a couple years. They used to have improv exercises that you would work on and you would do improvs.

Acting is a tough business, and you need to be in good shape mentally and physically.

Once an actor told me he went to the Shakespeare School of Acting, and I said, 'I went to the Shakespeare of Acting, too' and he said, 'Oh really?' And I said, 'I went to Shakespeare Elementary School in Chicago.' He didn't take the joke well, he didn't laugh and didn't think it was funny - I thought it was funny. It's all the same to me.

Acting is the perfect idiot's profession.

I was never a villain on the stage. I always played strong, sympathetic types. My first stage role with a speaking part, believe it or not, was as a priest. It wasn't until I began acting in films that the producers and directors saw me primarily as a bizarre villain.

I'm enjoying it, but I still don't know why I'm hooked on acting.

The difference - the fundamental difference between theater acting and film acting is that film acting is disjunctive.

When someone's acting for a scene, they can fool the camera. But in everyday life, unless you're watching and censoring yourself every minute, or spending all your time in the company of ladies, what you feel is bound to show in your eyes.

It never occurred to me that I was a leading man until I was 19 years old. I had been acting since I was 10, so that's nine years and 30 or 40 plays, in school and summer stock, professional theater, too.

I still have the desire to do the job of acting. It's just a matter of whether I'll be allowed to do the job of acting that remains to be seen. There are only so many brick walls that I'm willing to beat my head on.

Anything I learned about the fine art of acting I learned from Hugo.