Actor Quotes

You know something, if you're not acting, you're not an actor - you've gotta work. No way around it.

Of course, people told me, 'Mikey, you will never be an actor. You don't have the look. You're ugly.'

Strategic thinkers were naturally rattled to find this outsider fooling around with their work. They had been thinking strategically when Reagan was just another movie actor playing opposite a chimpanzee, for heaven's sake. They think Reagan is too naive, too innocent, to grasp the intellectual complexities of cold war strategy.

Fate destined me to play Fagin. It was the part of a lifetime, and I was the only actor to be in the stage production and in the film.

In my career as an actor, there is a catchphrase that Scofield always says often in regards to his brother, 'Have a little faith.' In my own career as an actor, there were times when I was the only one who believed in myself in the face of the odds.

More than an actor, I am a performer... I'm a great believer - honestly so, shamelessly so, vulgarly so - that cinema is for entertainment. If you want to send messages, there's the postal service.

I can be in 20 movies. But I'll never be an actor.

I should be soaring away with my head tilted slightly toward the gods, feeding on the caviar of Shakespeare. An actor must act.

If you're a kid who's not necessarily attractive, and you don't have money, and you're not hip and cool, chances are you're not going to feel good about yourself and want to be an actor.

Watching a good actor is the best way to learn.

On set I keep myself to myself; I'd rather the director speak up. I'm not gonna direct a younger actor. I think the power of example works best, actually.

My advice has always been to study the craft of acting if you want to be an actor. There are many great schools that teach acting. NYU being one of them.

I am an actor through and through.

I'm an actor first and foremost; it's my first love and passion.

I'm not going to say, I'm an actor and I'm changing the world. Who cares?

For an actor to have a role that they're recognized and remembered for over the years, it's unusual. It's very lucky if it happens once - and it's luck that it's happened to me a couple of times.

I wasn't like a Hollywood child actor - 'I'm five! I can sing, I can dance, I can act! I wanna be a star!'

Today's films are so technological that an actor becomes starved for roles that deal with human relationships.

But you really - I always think that a director has got to adapt to whatever the needs of the actor are. You know, so if you take someone like Eddie Murphy, who is not a big fan of rehearsal. You know he comes out of stand-up. He comes - it's all about capturing the moment - in the moment, you know.

I was not what you'd call a first-class actor, but I did all right.

I'm an actor, coming from New York theater.

When you're working as an actor, you don't think that when you get out of school, it's going to be so hard to get a job. Just to get a job. Any job. Whatsoever. You don't think that people are going to see you in a certain way.

I had a feeling about Shakespeare's soliloquies, that there should be a real exchange between the actor and the audience.

If it's something that reaches out and grabs me, I want to do it. I have a lot of trouble doing things that don't grab me. So, I'm not a very good actor in that way. I can't fake it.

I was always a singer. But I was always focused on being an actor as my trade. Music I do just for me. The movie business is very difficult but the music business is just impossible.

There are some actor secrets you keep sometimes, and you want to keep.

Whatever you do, make sure you want to write more than you want to be a writer. Make sure you want to act more than you want to be an actor. That is what will sustain you.

I shoot people in a way that makes the audience feel equal to them. And it's hard to express and it's hard to execute but I think it works on every level - the choice of the material the choice of the actor, my relationship with the actor, and so on.

It is for the latter that I always wanted to be an actor: to play characters who are always on the move.

The days when the words 'Hollywood actor' framed Ronald Reagan like bunny fingers as an ID tag and an implied insult seem far-off and quaint: nearly everybody in politics - candidate, consultant, pundit, and Tea Party crowd extra alike - is an actor now, a shameless ham in a hoked-up reality series that never stops.