Actor Quotes

What I ended up doing was becoming an actor who didn't mind doing other people's words.

Desperation is the perfume of the young actor. It's so satisfying to have gotten rid of it. If you keep smelling it, it can drive you crazy. In this business a lot of people go nuts, go eccentric, even end up dead from it. Not my plan.

I became an actor by accident.

I think every actor should go back and do theater periodically.

As an actor, you're always at the service of somebody else's vision. In a play, it's more of the director's vision, and he or she's got their hands on you all the way up to opening night, and if it's a film, there are even more people.

Part of the reason of being an actor is you like playing other people's lives and exploring all the psychologies in that and the emotions.

They say that theater is the actor's medium, television is the writer's medium and film is the director's medium, and it's really true.

I don't care about the money. I just need, as an actor, to do as many different things that I can to make me feel good about myself.

I like to consider myself an actor who just happens to be Hispanic.

An actor should be able to create the universe in the palm of his hand.

If you're an actor, there's going to be a sense of fantasy about yourself, especially in the celebrity world we live in today. You give the illusion of being in control, sexy, at ease, with never a difficult moment. Those are the basic lies that all celebrities tell. For me, they're the more dangerous lies to come to terms with.

When they asked Jack Benny to do something for the Actor's Orphanage - he shot both his parents and moved in.

You know to me, being a good actor, the most important quality is you've got to love to play, and to just be open to anything.

I don't want to be a star. If you have to label me anything, I'm an actor - I guess. A journeyman actor. I think 'star' is what you call actors who can't act.

The general view is that actors start on soaps and then maybe graduate to prime-time television or film; normally you don't see a film actor going to do a soap.

When I come up against a director who has a concept that I don't agree with, or maybe I just haven't thought of it or whatever, I'd be more prone to go with them than my own because I want to be out of control as an actor, I want them to have the control, otherwise it's going to become predictably my work, and that's not fun.

As you know, Hollywood loves to pigeonhole all the actors and actresses, and suddenly I got 're-pigeonholed' as an action actor.

Right now, if you're interested in being a dramatic actor, they're not making that many just regular dramas. Movies have to have some other thing going on.

I look at smoking as a crutch, and as an actor I would like strip away as many crutches as possible.

As an actor you have one great fear: pimples!

I guess you can say that every actor is a 'character actor' on some level. But I think some actors have a wider range. I think that's how you get that mantle.

The security comes, as an actor, in knowing that you're not in control. If you try to control your career, or how people perceive you, you'll make yourself unhappy, because life doesn't work like that. So much is luck. It's much better to let yourself off, to think, 'There's nothing I can do.'

I'm an actor's director. I love it when talented actors can bring characters to life.

I had just arrived in New York from California. I was nineteen years old and excited beyond belief. I was an art student and an acting student and behaved as most young actors did - meaning that there was no such thing as a good actor, 'cause you yourself hadn't shown up yet.

How can a president not be an actor?

I can't say I was unhappy as a child actor in films. I had a particularly wonderful time.

As an actor I think sometimes producers need a little bit of encouragement to see you in a particular role, they may not have as much imagination as you would expect.

In my first film, I was a basketball player. Like every good actor, I lied when they asked me if I could play.

It used to be that you could do these nuggets of a movie and it would attach itself in terms of credibility to your work and the style of work that you did, that people would be interested and curious about you and your work as an actor.

When you are a character actor they trust you will go in and give them a full character and leave.