Actor Quotes

And my dad, you're a great actor but you're a better father.

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.

I'm an actor and it happened to go my way that day.

People told me, when I was coming through the ranks, that a mark of a great actor is one who deals with the period of unemployment as well as they deal with the period of employment.

I realise that I do not change the course of history. I am an actor, I do a movie, that's the end of it. You have to realise we are just clowns for hire. After I had success it was great, at first, not to worry about money. It was on my mind when I was growing up.

Then I got out of the service, and I was going to be a Shakespearean actor.

For a long time, I really struggled with the idea of being an actor because I really felt that I should be in the Peace Corps.

Every actor I ever meet goes, 'Ultimately I plan on having my own company and write and direct,' but yes, I too would love to write and direct a movie. I want to do a play, too. I want to do it all.

I really, specifically, love acting, and I think it's a really cool thing to be really indulgent and follow that. I have a lot of ambitions in life, but for the next few years, I just want to be an actor. That's a lucky opportunity, and that drives me to want to be good at that.

All the dialogue on tape, and we'd play the tape in performance. Then I thought it'd be interesting if the actor's repeated what they heard on the tape, but at a slower speed, so we'd get a web of language.

There are not many things in my life I can be absolutely proud of or certain I got right, but one of them is that I've got better as an actor. I've learnt how to do it. And I still have enough energy to do it.

When I was a kid, I wanted to be a clown. I didn't want to be an actor, I wanted to join the circus and entertain people.

I've been working professionally as an actor since I was 20. That's going to be 25 years soon. So, that's a veteran. That's a big-time veteran. I've had some great successes, and I've had some not-successes.

I mean, I enjoy my work as an actor. But to make a difference in people's lives through advocacy and through supporting research - that's the kind of privilege that few people will get, and it's certainly bigger than being on TV every Thursday for half an hour.

As an actor, of course, you want to be in something that's successful.

I used to say that I wanted someone cute and nice, an actor too, so he'd get it. But now I think it would be good for me to date someone who's not in the business.

The actor has a constant problem of personal identity.

You're looking at an actor whose price has just doubled.

To wait, for an actor, is not like someone who's waiting to see the doctor. It's not the kind of wait where you get bored.

Every actor I think has got their own number of takes that they like, you know. Some actors like to go all day, you know on the one scene and some actors want to take two takes. I personally like four.

It's a risk casting anyone against type or what they're known to do. But there's one thing better than having a great actor, which is having a great actor who's never done what you're asking him to do. He's hungry to get out of the trailer every day and hungry to test himself.

The director I had most involvement with was Alex Rockwell. He gave me a lot of responsibility as an actor.

I was fortunate as a young actor, to go straight to the RSC, where I learned that being an actor can bring with it wonderful responsibilities.

It's not like I had big dreams to go to California and become an actor. I loved doing my shows at school and community theater, and I probably would have settled in New York because it was closer. I was going to go to NYU.

How was I going to make a man fly? How was I going to convince the public that an actor could fly?

I think it's sort of a rite of passage for a British actor to try and get the American accent and have a good crack at doing that.

I'm living every ten-year-old boy's fantasy. The other day, Chris and I had this big scene where we had to pull out our guns, and I was thinking, 'Here we are in New York City - a place where every actor wants to be - and we are literally playing cops and robbers. How great is that?'

There's editing, and scripts to read and edit, and casting, and all the elements of production that just sort of take up the normal downtime that you would have as an actor. So there's not a lot of that for me.

I wouldn't say I'm a method actor. I do research when I feel I don't have enough experience for the part I'm playing.

So I started to learn Russian and I was one of those probably way too eager, annoying young actor kids who was trying to change all my lines to Russian, much to the dismay of the director and Nic Cage.