About Acting Quotes

#1. I just randomly fell into acting. I was so young at the time that I never really thought about acting ... After I was into it, I had a feeling that I was going to end up doing this anyway somehow.

Tye Sheridan

#2. I'm always open to somebody else having a better idea, but I feel like, if it feels real, then people aren't thinking about it and they're just doing the acting of it.

Anne Fletcher

#3. The most interesting thing about acting is when you go to the dark places, that's a lot of energy. When you go to the happiest places, it's also a lot of energy.

Jamie Foxx

#4. One of the first things I learned about acting was, the only person you compete against is yourself.

Ed Harris

#5. I don't like to intellectualize about my acting. I don't sit around and study the pages of a script over and over again.

Genevieve Bujold

#6. I think the beautiful thing about acting is you don't really know who you are. You're able to be whatever you want any day during the week. So I really couldn't see myself being anything else.

Steven R. McQueen

#7. The worst acting is about imitation.

Paul Guilfoyle

#8. There's a lot of romanticisation of the intuitive actor and method acting and all kinds of notions about getting inside a character and coming out from there.

Edward Norton

#9. I moved to Chicago and I did theater, and then I started writing and I stop acting and I did sketch. You know, I did all of the things that, if you were serious about doing television, don't do.

Allison Tolman

#10. Acting is not about being someone different. It's finding the similarity in what is apparently different, then finding myself in there.

Meryl Streep

#11. I learned more about acting from George Stevens in a few months than I had in my entire life up until then.

Alan Ladd

#12. One of the difficulties of being a writer must be that you create drama that you can't live out. That's one of the wonderful things about acting.

Anjelica Huston

#13. The only thing I don't like about acting is that it takes so much time away from my family. Otherwise, I don't have any complaints.

Mark Wahlberg

#14. I can tell that fame is probably the most unadorable thing about acting. High School Musical is what got me here today and I'm very grateful - but the fame part isn't so fun.

Zac Efron

#15. I was trying to be the best rapper in the world. I wasn't thinking about acting.

Ice Cube

#16. It's the persona that makes you a leading actor. A leading actor has something extra that's fun to watch. But it isn't usually about acting.

Val Kilmer

#17. In order to maintain that fire for acting and capture its essence, you can't let yourself be concerned with what people have to say about you. You just can't.

Kate Winslet

#18. Acting didn't solve much! If it did, I would have ended up much less crazy than I am today, but I'm not. At least for me, acting is a relief - a relief to be able to admit certain things about myself and disguise in my work, in my characters.

Dustin Hoffman

#19. I have the opportunity to learn about the fashion world, and I appreciate it as an art form ... But I never want it to take over my acting.

Lupita Nyong'o

#20. The weird thing about acting is you're the most competent when you're at your best, but you have to be validated.

Max Minghella

#21. Great acting is about listening to what they are saying ... not waiting to deliver your lines.

Michael Caine

#22. I moved from acting to stand-up because castings are just about what you look like. It doesn't matter if you can act or not. In comedy, no one cares what you look like.

Mark Billingham

#23. What do I love about acting? I love traveling, meeting new people, exploring and just doing what I love.

Bailee Madison

#24. I can't imagine ever not doing [acting]. I would feel like I would have lost a limb. But I am older now, and sometimes I wonder who I would have been and what about me would have changed had I not had these experiences as a young person

Jodie Foster

#25. That's what I like about acting. You don't know where you'll be in year.

David Walton

#26. A lot of what is famous about film making are the movie stars and what is considered a movie star is a lot of great acting, but also a lot of physical beauty.

Kelli O'Hara

#27. The way that actors talk about acting is generally quite punishing, and I think actors want to put forward the idea that they do all of this work because, you know, it's a post-De Niro world, when, largely, in fact, it's almost never true.

Ben Mendelsohn

#28. My best advice to actors is if you love acting, do it every chance you get. Success does not mean success. All that matters is whether or not you're doing your best to entertain. The way this business works is all about luck and timing.

Matthew Gray Gubler

#29. I like to rehearse with the actors scenes that are not in the script and will not be in the film because what we're really doing is trying to establish their character, and good acting to me is about reacting.

Jim Jarmusch

#30. It's whether they have a vision and whether they're able to communicate it. The best director is just someone who gets over-excited about doing it - they don't even have to know much about camera or acting.

Colin Firth

#31. As always, with acting, you can't be too self-conscious. You shouldn't care about what people are thinking about you at the time because they're not caring about you, they're caring about the character.

Freddie Highmore

#32. And maybe now it's about telling the occasional story that I recently believe in and think would be good to put out there into the world. But I look back, that crying taught me how to approach everything in life. Acting or Otherwise.

Drew Barrymore

#33. I'm an entertainer, so in whatever form I entertain ... The thing about being a rapper is that you have more control over your form, whereas with acting you have to compromise a lot.

Method Man

#34. Acting keeps me alert to people, and life. I don't know, there's something about going to work early in the morning, and having to stay alert and concentrated. Maybe that keeps your mind alive.

Steve Martin

#35. It's hard to talk about acting because I don't think it's quite as explicit as a lot of people might think. And that's probably the best thing about it.

Paul Dano

#36. I've always had to bind up and wrestle fear, because acting is really about faith. And faith and fear can't really stay in the same room. So, in order for you to be more than a conqueror, you're going to have to defeat fear with faith.

Derek Luke

#37. When I started acting, my whole focus and intention was to work as a stage actor in a company where you're asked to different roles - do a comedy, do a tragedy, etc. I haven't had any reservations about jumping from one type of genre to another.

Kyle MacLachlan

#38. Making a film or doing a play are completely different experiences and entirely fulfilling, but completely unique. I also think one complements the other. People often say that theater is about flexing your muscles, and is actually real acting, whereas I sort of disagree.

Eddie Redmayne

#39. I learned never to listen to acting teachers because they don't know what the hell they're talking about.

Tim Robbins

#40. Writing a story is pretty all-consuming for me - it feels a lot like method acting, and for the eight or twelve or fifteen months that I'm working on a story, I'm constantly thinking about how my narrator would react to whatever tangled situation I'm in.

Molly Antopol

#41. Difference thinking' is more than the ability to connect the dots, though. It's about seeing the truth, recognising the opportunity in that truth and then acting on it. You need to learn how to see the dots and understand the significance of connecting them before you can begin.

Bernadette Jiwa

#42. I think great acting is about inhabiting a skin and transforming yourself.

David Ayer

#43. I didn't learn anything about acting until I joined the Group Theatre. They taught me an entirely new approach, an entirely new technique.

John Garfield

#44. It's not all about acting. It's about giving an art of entertainment to humanity.

Sean Berdy

#45. I've had a job since I was 11. I had a paper route, I worked at a video store, I was a toy doll at FAO Schwartz when I was in high school. And I think that it's made me really disciplined when it came to pursuing acting, because I had no clue how to go about it.

Cara Buono

#46. I knew absolutely nothing about acting, and had to be taught everything. Some people are born naturals and know how to walk, talk and hold themselves. I didn't and had to learn everything.

Richard Briers

#47. I won't even think about acting in a role where I didn't do a back story for a character.

Quentin Tarantino

#48. I learned a lot about acting - watching not just myself but other actors and learning how to distinguish between two great takes. It's also about one's own taste in performance.

Ralph Fiennes

#49. When it comes to acting, people talk about the suspension of disbelief that you ask of the audience. Before that starts, you have to, as an actor, suspend your own disbelief.

Helena Bonham Carter

#50. Darling, don't be silly, your whole future is ahead of you. All you have to do is go out there and ask for a part- something small and reasonable just to start with. From there, no one can stop you. Don't feel bad about anything you've done, and for God's sake, have fun.

Anna Godbersen

#51. I've learned almost everything I know about acting from my dad.

Henry Hopper

#52. I always say about acting: the audience doesn't come to see you, they come to see themselves. So if you're able to give them an experience where they feel, 'Oh, my gosh, that's me, that's my story, they know!' then you've done your job.

Julianne Moore

#53. The whole thing about acting, the draw for me, is the opportunity to do things you don't get to do in real life.

Benjamin Bratt

#54. You learn a lot about acting and being physical and being on stage, but there is technical stuff on camera that you can't learn until you do it.

Finn Wittrock

#55. Acting is largely about putting on masks, and music is about removing them.

Hugh Laurie

#56. I've stopped showing actors what to actually do. I rather just talk to them about it. Then I usually play music. That's a great way to convey inner emotion, bring the power of style and acting together. That's really what it is, very good acting without talking.

Nicolas Winding Refn

#57. What I learned about acting is that you become the character, like I became 'Timothy Green.'

CJ Adams

#58. For an actor to remain a child is rather important. It's a childlike, dreamy thing, acting, if you think about it. It's the sort of thing children fantasise about, playing cowboys and Indians in the street. I think that acting is just a highly refined development of that.

Michael Gambon

#59. When I finally awoke it was crystal clear to me that I had to pursue my love for acting on a professional level in film/TV despite any fears I'd had about it previous to the accident. And I've never looked back.

Kyle Cassie

#60. I grew up in baseball stadiums. It was my two brothers and baseball around me all the time. I knew nothing about film or acting or theater when I was young!

Stephanie Sigman

#61. I had a dream about you. We were actors in a horror movie and I was hunting you down with a knife. When I finally cornered you the director yelled "Cut".... What? I can't be blamed for following instructions.

Georgia Saratsioti

#62. I won a scholarship to come to LA and compete in a modeling and talent completion and was amazed when I won it. I had never acted before in my life and won the acting category. I began to wonder what this is about and then decided to see what happened.

Eva Longoria

#63. I think the funny thing about acting for me - and I hold it in a very holy, spiritual way - not to be overly fundamentalist about it, but it's that important to me - is that it is an ancient healing art.

Melissa Leo

#64. I think that different actors go about their preparation differently, but when it comes to acting, I use my imagination.

Edi Gathegi

#65. It never occurs to me that acting with a superstar is something to worry about. I figure the bigger the better because more will be demanded of me.

Peter Riegert

#66. I love talking about acting. I'm just such a fan of actors and filmmakers, and I try to choose roles where I get to talk to great actors about acting and learn.

Jessica Chastain

#67. I do paint, and I wanted to actually be a painter. Sometimes I'll whip out paints. It's tough to find the motivation, but it's also a solitary, lonely occupation. What I like about acting is that it is such a collaborative thing.

Dichen Lachman

#68. When you talk about a great actor, you're not talking about Tom Cruise.

Lauren Bacall

#69. One of the things I like about acting is that, in a funny way, I come back to myself.

Bill Murray

#70. Great acting is as much about the choices a performer makes as it is about their ability.

Stewart Stafford

#71. It was difficult for me to feel my feelings, so I just buried them. Then I found that acting was a way for me to get them out. But now that I'm a reasonably sane adult, acting is more about my trying to engage other people: Acting is cathartic for the viewer as well.

Adelaide Kane

#72. Acting is something I'm extremely passionate about.

Bindi Irwin

#73. Acting is about people. Other people. Otherwise, you're not acting, you're doing monologues.

Daniel Day-Lewis

#74. I really like to hear actors talk about acting, but I don't really like hearing myself talk.

Michael Keaton

#75. So, I certainly subscribe to what Bette said about acting being very hard work.

Marie Windsor

#76. My favorite thing about acting is that I can play all kinds of different people. Frankly, I don't consider myself a very interesting person, so the characters I play are usually much more fun.

Nathan Kress

#77. Acting comes natural to me. What I do enjoy is meeting people that I've idolized for years. I mean, I was talking about bringing up a child with Edie Falco yesterday.

Josh Gad

#78. I don't want to be alone; the thing I love about acting is the other people you're doing it with.

Martin Freeman

#79. The hardest thing about movie acting is that if you're playing a character who changes within the movie, you've got to do that, but you've got to do it out of sequence, because we never have gotten to shoot in sequence, and that's really, really tough.

John Sayles

#80. What's fascinating about acting is that you put yourself in somebody else's mind or in their shoes.

Dermot Mulroney

#81. It's not about being fearless, it's about acting in spite of fear

Veronica Roth

#82. That's one of my little expressions. I never really studied acting so I kind of kiddingly talk about "building your circle" and "mooding up," because I really didn't learn any technique.

Susan Sarandon

#83. The best thing about acting is when you're playing a scene and you actually become your character and lose yourself in that moment. That's when you know you've been succeeded at what you've worked very hard to accomplish in your profession. Those are the truly thrilling moments.

Meryl Streep

#84. I love challenging myself, doing different things and exploring different areas that I haven't been to or gone to before. That's what I love about acting, and that's what I love about film.

Taylor Lautner

#85. Acting is like sex. You should just do it and not talk about it.

Joanne Woodward

#86. A little secret about actors is that we never think we do a great job in auditions. We kind of just go in and do our work and leave sort of hoping for the best. It's an interesting dynamic - acting is such an interesting job. You never quite know how well you do.

Sufe Bradshaw

#87. The experience of both acting and producing has been wonderful. It certainly has created a full plate. But it is very exciting and rewarding to have creative input on the show. 'Reed' is about love and family and for me, playing a hand in shaping it has been deeply gratifying.

Tracee Ellis Ross

#88. When it's working, what acting is really about is getting into the essence of a moment in a creative, joyous way - through whatever frees you up.

Lili Taylor

#89. I think a lot of directors, they come out of film school, they don't know anything about acting. Or they're writers that don't know anything about the process. And I think they're afraid sometimes to talk to actors and be honest with actors.

Matt Dillon

#90. John was the smartest and most amazing comedian I've ever worked with. I think more than teaching me about acting or comedy, he taught me about life and the love of people and respect of people.

Kaley Cuoco

#91. When people asked me, 'What are you going to do?' I'd say, 'I'm going to be an actor,' without really thinking about it. And I started acting without really thinking about it. I only thought about it properly a bit later.

Martin Clunes

#92. I am passionate about a few things, of course acting, films/TV and improving the lives of youth in urban communities.

Jamie Hector

#93. Acting is all about likability.

Clive Owen

#94. When I was about 16 or 17, I had a teacher who took a group of us to the National Theater in Washington, D.C., and I saw Ian McKellen do his one-man show - I think it was called Acting Shakespeare - and it completely bombed me; it put the zap on my brain in a big way.

Edward Norton

#95. What's beautiful about the actual acting class environment is that you can use it to push through everything: push your voice, push your inhibitions, push your fears, push your confidence, push your vulnerability, push your silences.

Dawn Olivieri

#96. It was like baptism by fire. There was no school for studying acting. You just have to take it upon yourself to learn from your peers. It's about opening your eyes, listening, and watching.

Michelle Yeoh

#97. I wasn't perfect and didn't have it together. I felt alone. So through acting, I decided to be a shape shifter and with every role become the character instead of being myself. It meant about 10 years of no one knowing I was the same person in every movie.

Brie Larson

#98. I love acting. I really do. I think that's maybe the one thing that is known about me.

Melissa Leo

#99. When I was in high school, I would perform every year in those plays and there was something I really loved about it. But I was completely unaware that you could sort of get into an acting career.

Nick Offerman

#100. Acting was my classroom in many ways and I always believed and I still do that acting is not just about pretending to be someone else, it's also about discovering yourself and reaching deeper inside yourself.

Kristen Stewart