Actor Quotes

If you really do want to be an actor who can satisfy himself and his audience, you need to be vulnerable. You must reach the emotional and intellectual level of ability where you can go out stark naked, emotionally, in front of an audience.

Before I was an actor I was an apprentice jockey, and now I'm out there racing against boys, sort of the spokesperson for people over 50 that they can do it.

Sidney Poitier, who is class personified, said: 'Lou, you're a leading man because you're a good actor.' Brought tears to my eyes.

I did not want to put myself on the line, as an Australian playing Britain's greatest comic actor. The fans of Sellers are obsessive, possessive - and aggressive. I did not want to risk their anger - or my own reputation.

Claude Rains was what we call an actor's actor. He was very involved with himself and his performance.

As an actor, being on autopilot is the worst thing possible.

I'm basically a movie actor now, and my big roles are mostly horror movies - unless I'm doing a guest star or something - and occasionally I try to get back into television.

Any competent actor could have done what I did.

The three actors I admire the most are all dead. Humphrey Bogart, Spencer Tracy and the French actor, Jean Gabin. They're all very natural, sort of masculine without being overly macho.

I made a decision that whether or not I was going to make under the national poverty level wasn't going to play a part in whether or not I was an actor. That's what I do.

I've always wanted to work with Blair, and finally the timing was right. I have a tremendous amount of respect for him. I think he's a hugely underrated actor in Hollywood.

I'm a Method actor. I spent years training for the drinking and carousing I had to do in this film.

Somebody did an article in one of the newspapers saying that at that time I had the most visibility of any actor around. Kind of nice, you know, when that thing was happening.

I'm just back in line with every other actor looking for a job right now and keeping my fingers crossed.

The whole point about becoming an actor is variety and changing roles.

I've never had any illusions about being a lead actor in films, because lead actors have to be of a certain kind. Apart from the beauty of looks and figure, which I cannot claim to have, there's just a particular kind of ordinary-Joe quality that a film star needs to have.

I phoned this number and said, Please, sir, I want to be an actor.

I'm an actor. And I guess I've done so many movies I've achieved some high visibility. But a star? I guess I still think of myself as kind of a worker ant.

The basic essential of a great actor is that he loves himself in acting.

I know I walk a fine line between being a respected actor and being what they call a sex symbol.

I was sick and tired of being an English actor who did a lot of American movies because I was cheap and good.

Sword fighting in film is not about how good the fighter is, but how good the actor receiving the blows is.

The last thing on my mind was to be an actor, but I had a crush on a cute girl in the drama department, so the best thing for me to do was audition, help out, do carpentry, whatever it took to get me on that project.

We have the Terminator as governor, and we had an actor as president, so why shouldn't we have a fashion designer as a senator?

The comedy of class, played so straight, is a wonderful thing for an actor to sink their teeth into.

There was never any career plan. When 'Red Dwarf' started I thought we were doing a curious little sitcom on BBC2, I didn't think I was becoming an actor. I didn't see that 21 years later I'd still be talking about it, let alone filming a new one. For me everything's always been an accident.

I'm a ballplayer, not an actor.

To be a good actor... it is necessary to have a firmly tempered soul, to be surprised at nothing, to resume each minute the laborious task that has barely just been finished.

I'm a character actor, and I made a choice when I was young, after 'Mystic Pizza', not to go for the mainstream stuff, and to do a more eclectic kind of route.

There's a fine line between the Method actor and the schizophrenic.