Acting For Kids Quotes

#1. Acting for kids is like playing house, you know? But growing up in Hollywood, it just made it seem possible.

Jennifer Jason Leigh

#2. The reason I haven't had kids yet is because I was so focused on my acting career, hoping I could get something to break.

Katharine McPhee

#3. Kids need love the most when they're acting most unlovable.

Erma Bombeck

#4. With acting, you see some of the kids are literally just off the street, untrained, and they are great. And others are off the street, untrained, and kind of horrible.

Patton Oswalt

#5. It's like kids playing house: 'You play the father, I'll play the mother.' You know, you dress up, you play, they pay, you go home. It's a game - acting's a game.

Robert Duvall

#6. As a kid, I was a huge fan of movies and acting. My mom was in the sort of community theater, and I always hung around down there, and I was a massive fan of everything I'm kind of involved in now. But fairly ordinary and cheeky.

Simon Pegg

#7. I couldn't be messing around and acting like an 11-year-old if we expected to compete well. I wanted to compete well, because it was great to see the looks in the eyes of men-like, "Wow, I am having a hard time beating this kid."

Karch Kiraly

#8. I actually quite like working with kids and I like working with animals, which everybody says you shouldn't do. It makes you feel like you're not acting, as soon as you have someone who's providing stuff to react to.

Robert Pattinson

#9. I'd done two years' worth of extra work, and all my friends who I would go on auditions with went to school for acting. These were kids who knew when they were 14 years old that this was what they wanted to do with their lives, and they prepared for it, and they're getting canned at every audition.

Michelle Rodriguez

#10. I was one of those kids who thought I could be the president of England when I grew up if I wanted to. Then I started acting and realized life is hard and people are mean. And there's no president of England and I'm not British.

Riley Keough

#11. Because when you're a 23-year old party girl who has to pee you don't really think about the possibility that your nerdy bouncer friend might suddenly start acting like a trench-coated pedophile who flashes kids at the park.

Kate Madison

#12. The biggest problem I have doing my acting is having to interact with other people. I think if it wasn't for my wife and my kids, I'd probably be a hermit.

John Gordon Sinclair

#13. There are kids who get on a BMX bike when they're eight years old and they go, 'Whoa, this is incredible,' and grow up to do extreme sports. It's the same for me with acting.

Joaquin Phoenix

#14. I started acting as a kid and doing advertising campaigns. I was probably 8 years old, and I really liked the attention.

Michiel Huisman

#15. Since Catherine [Zeta-Jones] and I got together, I've cut back dramatically. My priorities changed, and I still love acting and all that, but not as much as I love watching my two kids grow up.

Michael Douglas

#16. One of the reasons I started acting was to re-make The Karate Kid, but Jaden Smith beat me to it.

Justin Hires

#17. I'm glad that my journey has been gradual and slow, instead of instant, because that allowed me to grow and discover who I am before I was thrown into the world. I'm happy I didn't start acting professionally as a kid/teen; looking back, I don't think I was ready.

Jade Hassoune

#18. I would never say don't do acting [to my kids], because I think it is a glorious profession and I am so thankful for everything it has let me express.

Meryl Streep

#19. Acting is playing - it's actually going out on a playground with the other kids and being in the game, and I need that. Writing satisfies that part of myself that longs to sit in my room and dream.

Billy Bob Thornton

#20. Sometimes you just have to let crap slide when it comes to adults acting like kids, because that can be a beautiful thing. True? True.

Matthew Quick

#21. It [love about acting] is all about role playing - the same thing you do when you're a kid, when you play with dolls or toys and make up stories. I never grew out of it.

Morgan Freeman

#22. I love acting, but I have two little kids, and it's 14 hours a day out of the house. You don't get that time back.

Gwyneth Paltrow

#23. I'm addicted to New York, and I like L.A., as I have kids there. Sometimes I think New Mexico is the one place where I could almost live there. It helps your acting; there's magic in that place.

Mark Margolis

#24. Grownups acting like the worst kind of kids, kids acting like they knew what was going on.

Thomas Pynchon

#25. When I went to acting school, the kids that got the best grades were the kids that could cry on cue. But it didn't really translate into careers for any of them, because the external is the easy part.

Albert Brooks

#26. When I was a young kid, my pops introduced me to it. He took me to Harlem, 145th and Edgecombe, to watch the filming of Claudine with James Earl Jones and Diahann Carroll. That was my first taste of seeing a set and the cameras, and I was bit by the acting bug at a young age.

Tracy Morgan

#27. There are kids who get on BMX bike when they are eight years old and they go,'Whoa, this is incredible,' and grow up to do extreme sports. It is the same for me with acting.

Joaquin Phoenix

#28. I like to do stuff for my brothers and sisters to appreciate because they look up to me, and for other kids around the world who want to get into acting or who just want to have somebody to look up to.

Kyla Pratt

#29. I becan acting when River was doing this TV series and they needed two kids for the show, so they got me and my little sister, Summer, to do it. After that I did some really weird guest spots with orangutans and stuff.

Joaquin Phoenix

#30. I keep my kids out of the whole business entirely. Allegra and Lucas are five and six and I'm not interested in them doing any acting at all. I don't want my kids in show business. I keep them as far away from my work as possible.

John Leguizamo

#31. I just do things I really enjoy. I enjoy acting. When I'm driving to the studio, I sing in the car. I love my work and my wife and my kids and my friends. And I think, 'You're a lucky man, Gregory Peck, a damn lucky man.'

Gregory Peck

#32. I just really enjoy the ritual of going to work and playing, which is essentially what we do. We play pretend. Acting is a kids' game.

Bailey Chase

#33. I fell in love with acting, just going to a lot of plays. My parents went to a lot of plays, and I went to a lot of schools that would get plays for kids.

Patrick J. Adams

#34. Acting is a tough industry. There are a lot of kids out there at drama schools and not a lot of money about, especially as the arts are being cut.

Phil Daniels

#35. I think loads of people see acting, when they're kids, as these magical stories that just happen within the context of the film or the play or the cartoon or whatever they're seeing. They don't imagine that there are actually people that go and do that for a living.

Rebecca Hall

#36. If you're small and can speak clearly and you're a cute kid, that's the craft, really. The whole child actor thing can be dangerous sometimes. Other kids were taking piano lessons; I did ballet and acting.

Rose McIver

#37. Ever since I started acting, I've always spoken to our people about identity. I've spoken to kids, telling them: Where do I get my strength to push through the barriers to get me where I'm at today? It's my culture and my traditions, you know?

Adam Beach

#38. The interesting thing with child actors is that kids are natural actors. They're wonderful actors, and most kids are acting all the time. They're imagining they're out in the yard playing. They're imagining that things happened, and they can get very vivid.

Clint Eastwood

#39. The one glaring issue I have with the modeling industry and the fashion industry is that there is no union for young women and when I went into acting, the way young kids are protected, there must be a mandatory union or regulation, it just has to be done.

Jaime King

#40. I got this to say. You're acting like a crowd of kids.

William Golding

#41. It was a lot of fun being a child actress. It suited me. I don't think it suits everybody, but I was in it because I had a passion, not because my parents wanted me to make money. If other kids want to do it, and they really like acting, go for it.

Alanna Ubach

#42. My point is that, over the years, I've taught five thousand people acting and lately I have a lot of energy on these kids, having the same break I had as a high school girl.

Sally Kirkland

#43. In high school, I got picked on. It's funny that I got tormented for what I'm doing now - the acting thing. People would see me in a Nickelodeon commercial, and I would hear about it the next day at school. Kids would say, 'Hi, TV Boy.' They heckled. I never got beat up.

Jason Biggs

#44. Looking at acting, in the movies or the theater, and the way I like to look at it, it's just an extension of childhood play ... Kids play and imagine in a very intense fashion and they don't need any director telling them, 'You really have to believe in it.' They believe in it completely.

Viggo Mortensen

#45. I enjoyed acting at school and went to an acting workshop for kids in Nottingham. It was twice a week after school and free to go to - ITV subsidised it. Every now and again, a casting director would turn up. 'Peak Practice' became a rite of passage for us. It was the first job I had.

Joe Dempsie

#46. I always think of the character as being me. But me wearing a 'coat', which may be a different way of speaking, moving or regarding other people. To me, acting is pretending, just like kids playing, only you pretend as if it were really, really real.

Fred Melamed

#47. It's funny the more technological advanced everything gets, the more like acting in your bedroom when you're a kid it is.

Michael Sheen

#48. I talk about acting to students making the transition from high school to UCLA. Kids going into this profession really need to know the reality of it.

Loni Anderson

#49. I never went to acting school. I started in the circus, music hall, I was in a group, did kids' bits. I've always had this kind of insecurity being uneducated.

Rupert Graves

#50. I went to a dentist for a toothache, and it turned out his kids were in an acting school. We talked about it, and I decided to enroll at the same school. I was 14. I guess you could say I just got lucky.

Nolan Gerard Funk

#51. I was an adult when I was supposed to be a kid. So now I'm an adult and I'm acting like a kid,

Miley Cyrus

#52. I loved doing school musicals [as a kid], I even started at an early age to write little plays for the school to perform. I was not just keen on that, it was during that time, during the school period then from an early age, that I began to dream about acting.

George Ogilvie

#53. Hollywood is fickle; your career can end pretty fast. If the acting jobs dry up, you have to have something to fall back on. In fact, that would be my advice to kids interested in acting - make sure you get an education too.

Matthew Lawrence

#54. Kids really take you out of yourself, and your priorities become really clear. With acting and the business, you don't really have priorities. You have no idea what each day or week's going to be like.

Josie Bissett

#55. Any acting roles will be few and far between until my kids are older and by then, who knows what I'll want to do?

Drew Barrymore

#56. I started acting long before I decided to pursue it. I started acting as an amateur when I was a kid, but I wanted to become a diplomat. It was self-centered and weird, but I had this idea of going out in the world and solving conflicts and making the world a better place.

Stellan Skarsgard

#57. As a kid, I was really into performing. I would do choruses, I would do musicals, whatever it was. And then, as a teenager, I got into an acting class at SUNY Purchase for gifted kids, and that really turned me on to material beyond musicals, Sam Shepard, and Christopher Durang plays.

Matisyahu

#58. My mom was always like, "If I know that my kid is having fun, she's gonna do whatever she wants. Whether that's gymnastics, learning the car, acting or just being a normal kid, she's gonna do what makes her happy." That's how I've always lived my life.

Chloe Grace Moretz

#59. Acting has always been my passion. It's always been my love, and I've always done it, since I was a kid.

Tanc Sade

#60. A lot of moms give their kids line reads. My mom wasn't put in that position because I always had an acting teacher helping with the feelings rather than how to say something.

Kirsten Dunst

#61. I still say I would love to go back to acting, but after my kids are older. You can't just drop everything and go out on a call and keep a stable life.

Suzanne Crough

#62. I used to wait tables at Gladstone's, a seafood restaurant, day in and day out. I made some of my best friends there. I taught dance and acting lessons to kids. It was awesome - an outreach program, Voices Unheard. I was a messenger for a couple of months.

Sufe Bradshaw

#63. My parents are the ones who really help me be grounded. I still go to school, I still do fun stuff with my friends; for the most part, I am a normal kid. It just so happens that I do some acting too!

Joshua Rush

#64. No matter what happens to you in life, you just roll with it. And then, when we went back to shoot Eclipse, I went to Quileute and taught some acting to the kids, and just got to spend some time in the community, which was great because it gave me an idea of where Emily came from.

Tinsel Korey

#65. The funny thing is, because I was doing a lot of theater when I was a kid, and a lot of that was musical theater, as I got older I became more interested in acting as a separate entity and music as a separate entity, like songwriting and production and recording and playing music.

Guy Pearce

#66. Some kids are good at math, some kids can run, and acting was an interest of mine. Because I knew you could do it for a living I decided, that's what I'm going to do.

Jonny Lee Miller

#67. Alan Alda and his wife Arlene are two of the most life-affirming people I've ever met. He espoused equal rights for women while producing, writing, acting in and directing 'M*A*S*H'; he used to commute between the set and home because he didn't want to disrupt his kids' schooling.

Sanjeev Bhaskar

#68. When the target audience is American teenage kids, you can have problems. My generation prized really fine acting and writing. Sometimes you have to go back to the basic principles which underpin great visual comedy.

John Cleese

#69. I couldn't function if I weren't allowed to stretch and do really different characters where I can change the whole "beingness" of that person. That's my pleasure in acting and has been since I was a kid. That's always been my pleasure to create complete characters.

John Travolta

#70. I wouldn't sacrifice my business for no acting career because my business is something, ultimately, that I know I'm going to pass down to my kids, and that's most important to me than anything else in the world. I can't pass an acting career down to my children.

Dwight Henry

#71. Acting is a really simple job - it's just hard to do. You just have to be that person with their background in that situation. That's all it is. My kids do it all the time when they're dressing up and playing games.

Jason Isaacs

#72. When I was a kid, I wanted to be an actor. I was acting in all the school plays. I went to school for acting. I was really sure that that's what I wanted to do.

Aaron Sorkin

#73. I love acting with kids, cause they're great acting partners. They're totally present. Even when they're acting, they're still available and you can crack them up or something weird will happen and they'll go with it.

Mark Ruffalo

#74. I think a lot of kids I've met in L.A. trying to act want to escape working long days and think acting is all photoshoots and red carpets.

Kiersey Clemons

#75. I was always into performing and dancing as a kid and acting was a safe place to have all my feelings, which is good as a child.

Bella Heathcote

#76. To be honest, it's considered very late to start acting at 11 and a half, for the industry. Most kids are doing it from toddlerhood on.

Mayim Bialik

#77. Some people live, eat and breathe art, and they love acting and filmmaking. I've got other loves. I love animals. I love teaching. I love kids. That's always something in the back of my mind.

Kay Panabaker

#78. I just wish all these young black kids would realize how significant it is to stop acting a fool out there, killing each other, not getting their education. You know, people have died to put us in a situation to be successful.

Charles Barkley

#79. I try to be a hard boiled sometimes. My kids see right through it. I'm acting. It's always, 'When I say you'll be back at 11, that means 11, not 11.15. Do you hear me!?' Then, 'Yeah, Dad.'

Liam Neeson

#80. I actually made an effort to reject acting, to shove it out of my body, because I didn't want my kids to have an actress as a mother-to have, like, a silly person.

Lisa Kudrow

#81. When I was doing all this acting stuff, all these kids, like, assumed, 'Oh, my God, you're on TV, and you probably have a lot of money.' And I was living in a garage.

Becky G

#82. For old actors, just remember that inside you're only 14. Acting is for kids. You poor old grown-ups, you've forgotten how to do what kids know automatically.

Ian McKellen

#83. I think acting is totally conducive to being a little kid, because kids are less inhibited and use their imagination.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt

#84. I've been acting since I was 8 - I used to play hockey and there was a kids' theatre down the street from my house and one day I just walked in and signed up for auditions for 'The Wizard Of Oz.'

Nico Tortorella

#85. Kids are a great excuse for you to stop acting like one.

Michael Madsen

#86. Maybe if the death had occurred on the other side of the street, I'd be watching from here with different kids, acting as foolish. Maybe the difference between horror and holiday was just the width of an ordinary street.

Dean Koontz

#87. As we mature and grow older we collect a lot of baggage, and a lot of that stuff you collect on life's journey gets in the way of acting. My kids can imagine a character and transform in the blink of an eye. It's so simple for kids, so complex for adults.

David Wenham

#88. I've always had a sense of responsibility - I think that comes with being the oldest kid in the family. Now, I'm getting more comfortable with acting a little younger and carefree because I've been so responsible my whole life. I'm letting go a little.

Cote De Pablo