Actor Quotes

I wanted really to make it moment to moment, partly because I'm an actor and that's how I operate - actors are all about creating the moment.

There's no way that I could be the president. You can't have a pacifist in the White House... I'm an actor. This is what I do for a living.

As an actor I'm part of a long line of character people you can take back to the silent movies.

You are always damned by things that you do well as an actor.

As an actor you want people to know you and there are times you want your pictures taken, but it's unnerving to walk out of a venue with friends and there are 20 people flashing lights in your face. Do you know how bright those lights are?

I like every single actor or actress in the world, because we never know what the conditions are like when they are working. I give everyone the benefit of the doubt and root for them like a psychotic sports fan.

I was always a character actor. I just looked like Little Red Riding Hood.

There's something so wonderful about being an actor in New York.

Sometimes you take a job for the money, sometimes you take it for the location, sometimes you take it for the script; there are just a number of reasons, and ultimately what you see is the whole landscape of it. But I can tell you from behind the scenes - that's what it is, as an actor.

I definitely had those moments, like any actor, when you get anxious and think, 'When am I going to work again?' But I would feel that way even when I had every offer in the world coming to me. Then I became a father and I felt a little more of the anxiety that came with the responsibility of being a parent.

One tries to be an observer as an actor and indeed as a director because the small things, the give-away things are what are really interesting to a performer.

The most experience I had in the criminology field is playing a thug as an actor. That was my first paid job. The police academy at the college was paying people to reenact the calls that potential cops would get. So I got to play thugs and people who were unruly.

I offer my performance as prayer for someone I've worked with as an actor or someone who has died. The image that comes into my head as I walk to the stage, I offer that performance up for that person.

I think in both of those situations, it's important as an actor to learn, despite the success I had as a kid, that it's important to understand what it means to be a small fish in a big pond.

This great imperialistic world called the United States has made us believe that an Oscar is the most important thing in the world for an actor. But if you think about it for five minutes you realise it can't be.

I wanted to be an actor when I was a kid.

What I mean is that none of my talents had a - what's that great word - rubric. A singer, an actor, a dancer - there was nothing I could really say I was. The writing came much later. And, actually, thank God, because if I had said I'm a singer, I would really have just had one thing to do.

I think part of being an actor is staying private.

The writing is really hard. You're alone. It really pulls it out of you. You pull it out of your head. But when you're a director, you're shopping - you're picking this actor, you're picking this scene. It's like the most intense kinetic high-speed shopping of all time. You sit in a chair and it will all come rushing at you like a wind tunnel.

The process of doing plays will make you an actor.

I have been an actor now for 40 years having worked in over 10 countries and three languages.

We all perform our lives in a way. And the actor is a perfect metaphor to get at that theme of 'how do we find our authentic selves?' And that we all - whether we're actors or not - perform ourselves. As a way of searching. As a way of fumbling around and trying to say, is this my voice? Is this who I am?

I will say nothing to an actor that cannot be translated into action.

I am a theatre actor, but the last ten years I've taken parts in movies because it keeps me in money.

The first time I made myself up, I was looking at my reflection in the mirror and it wasn't me looking back. It allowed me to do things I couldn't do as myself. I found out how powerful that was and how much that can mean to an actor.

I'm exceedingly proud of being an actor, but I never recommend it to anyone.

I certainly was an actor and then I drifted more towards writing and directing.

Yeah, I started when I was 6 years old. My brother and sister would get all of these presents at Christmas time from the cast and crew of their show and I was jealous. So I decided that I had to become an actor.

I'm an actor's director.

I didn't feel like going any further in this scene with the boy. He was not a professional actor, and if I had pushed the scene any further it would have destroyed the tone of the movie.