Acting For The Camera Quotes

#1. When you're modeling you're actually acting for the camera and the photographer. It's more fun, too because there are no lines to memorize.

Cindy Margolis

#2. Modeling teaches you to be completely conscious of the camera. Acting is being totally unconscious of it.

Phoebe Cates

#3. I definitely knew that I loved acting from the very beginning. I was such a ham growing up. Wherever the camera was, I wanted to be right in front of it.

Naya Rivera

#4. 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

#5. With film, you have very limited tools to convey subjectivity - voiceover, the camera's point of view, good acting - but even the very best actor in the world is crude by comparison with what you can do in a written paragraph.

William Boyd

#6. I'm not a photographer, so I didn't get into F-stops or ND filters or background, foreground, cross-light, all that stuff. But I was interested in the camera and the lenses. That's the world that I'm moving in, in terms of acting and giving a performance.

Keanu Reeves

#7. For women and men, but especially women, with on camera acting you have to look a certain way. You have to present yourself as the most attractive version of yourself that you can be, and then you're judged based on how attractive you are or if you are the right look for the character.

Ashly Burch

#8. We [musicians] are comfortable in front of the camera doing music videos, and it's almost a form of acting when we're doing music videos. We're acting out our own thoughts and what we've written down on paper.

Ludacris

#9. The camera lens or the television camera is still just a proscenium arch. And as a great old character actor once said to me, wherever you're acting, you reach up and take hold of the proscenium arch, and you pull it down around your shoulders.

Robert Preston

#10. The MTV thing is the thing that I will always tip my hat to because that was like my acting class and how I got comfortable in front of a camera and how I kind of created my own thing.

Pauly Shore

#11. It's difficult, if not impossible, to get away with anything false before the camera. That instrument penetrates the husk of the actor; it reveals what's truly happening - if anything, if nothing. A close-up demands absolute truth. It's a severe and awesome truth

Elia Kazan

#12. I prefer directing to acting. There is huge freedom that comes from being behind the camera. It brings a lot of responsibilities as well, but is intensely rewarding. Particularly the chance to help draw out the best in young actors.

Angelina Jolie

#13. I just love the whole art form of acting, of being in front of a camera and playing different things. Not that I would ever say I'm the greatest actor in the world, but I am capable of playing different kinds of roles that emotionally I could get into.

Andrew Dice Clay

#14. I have been taking classes and I'm familiar with stage, but I'm not as familiar with acting on camera.

Kevin Richardson

#15. I do tend to like movies that challenge me professionally. That's mostly on a smaller scale, when you have one or two or five actors, and it's all about the acting and not the camera.

Ayelet Zurer

#16. You're used to having a camera in your face when you're playing a character - it's like having a mask on. But when you have to be you, you're so worried you'll make an idiot of yourself. Acting is a kind of escapism.

Sheridan Smith

#17. I grew up in New York, so I fell in love with acting on a stage, not in front of a camera.

Kerry Washington

#18. You know, everyone says, 'Modeling and acting are so similar' ... they say, 'It's so natural for models to become actresses because they use the camera.' I don't think of it in that way.

Gisele Bundchen

#19. I'll never stop acting, but music is another passion of mine. I just love creating projects in the entertainment field and performing onstage or in front of a camera.

Katherine McNamara

#20. You can be in an acting class all you want, but you don't fully learn until you get off that stage and in front of a camera.

Nicholas Lea

#21. The camera does not like acting. The camera is only interested in filming behaviour. So you damn well learn your lines until you know them inside out, while standing on your head!

Ben Kingsley

#22. To be honest, I don't see myself acting forever. I just can't imagine myself being a 70-year-old man fighting for roles. I would love to do small parts in my friends' movies or things that I'm directing myself. I do envision myself behind the camera as I get a little bit older.

Dave Franco

#23. You've got to love acting and that's true for me. I love the idea of getting on stage and getting in front of a camera.

Warwick Davis

#24. Sometimes you're watching a great film actor, and if you stand 10 feet away from them, you're like, 'God, they're terrible. They're not doing anything.' And then you see the close-up, and it's so nuanced, and so much expression is happening. They were acting for that camera and for no one else.

Finn Wittrock

#25. The play is the source, it is orchestrated with words. In a movie, you are not dealing with as much as that. There are machines and wires. When you're acting for a camera, it keeps taking and never giving back.

Al Pacino

#26. That was the beginning of modern acting for me. You don't have to tell a camera everything. It gets bored if you do and wants to look elsewhere.

Stephen Rea

#27. I'm a fan of making films. Whether I'm on stage or in front of a camera, one of my first loves is performing for the people. I'd like to do more acting.

Busta Rhymes

#28. When I was little, I didn't know you got paid for acting. My parents put the money in the bank for me, but I just thought it was this fun thing that I was so excited to do. You got to be on the set and get a little bit of makeup and be on camera.

Chelan Simmons

#29. My dad was always taking photos of us at home, and even on set - he'd bring us along and stick us in the photos in the background. It was almost the beginning of acting for me, like, 'Hey, you go over there and play basketball in the background, and don't even think about the camera.'

Ansel Elgort

#30. I'm glad I took the leap away from acting into going behind the camera because it's much more satisfying - I love acting and I still do, but it's much more satisfying to be able to make the stuff.

Paul Feig

#31. When someone's acting for a scene, they can fool the camera. But in everyday life, unless you're watching and censoring yourself every minute, or spending all your time in the company of ladies, what you feel is bound to show in your eyes.

Cesar Romero

#32. I don't like acting; not in front of the camera.

Spike Lee

#33. Everything about acting is a challenge. I'm self-conscious. You couldn't do anything to cause me to be more self-conscious than to stick a camera in my face and have 60 people standing behind it, waiting for me to perform.

Billy Campbell

#34. With modeling, you pose. You want to look your best all the time. With acting, you have to be aware of the camera, but the more you show your imperfections, the better you're going to be.

Diane Kruger

#35. I like acting too much and it's too, I'm just too busy doing that and I'm too hungry for it, to get behind the camera. I mean, unless I could act in it, too. I don't think I've got the right brain. I'm too disorganized.

Rachel Weisz

#36. Acting in 'Command & Conquer 3' called for me to interact with the player and to look directly into the camera, which is a big no no when filming for TV or film.

Grace Park

#37. The upsides of acting in things is mostly getting your hair done and having people give you clothes. So as long as you can have a little bit of that in your life, then it's just as delightful to be behind camera.

Tina Fey

#38. I tend to want to go quite big in my acting, which you just cannot do in front of a camera. It's taken me a while to learn how to pull it back.

Phoebe Fox

#39. The trick is not to become somebody else. You become somebody else when you're in front of a camera or when you're on stage. There are some people who carry it all the time. That, to me, is not acting.

Ernest Borgnine

#40. I always thought acting was all lights, camera, action. It's a job; you have to do your job correctly.

Corey Haim

#41. I went to college and got my degree in acting, but because it was all theater, I really consider my first couple years on 'Mad Men' as amazing training for working in television and for acting on-camera.

Gillian Jacobs

#42. My acting technique is to look up at God just before the camera rolls and say, 'Give me a break.'

James Caan

#43. You don't want to say somebody did a great job of acting. You want to say, "Where did he find that person? How did he get that factory worker to come out of the factory and be on camera?" You want to believe that person is real.

Ronee Blakley

#44. In my years of acting, the one thing I was never able to do convincingly was to laugh on camera. Fake-laugh.

Paul Feig

#45. I went from off-off Broadway. I would direct plays in Baldwin Hills. Almost Tyler Perry-like, really trying to express myself in that and not really knowing how to, knowing acting in story, but not really knowing how to technically hold a camera.

Lee Daniels

#46. I've dealt with a few method actors, and I don't know if should say this, but I think it's a bunch of nonsense. I think it's film acting and you just have to be on when the camera is rolling.

Natalie Portman

#47. After 2000 or so, I started to realize I wanted to be doing something else. I didn't want to be in front of a camera. I was frustrated. I didn't think I would stop acting, but I didn't want to be seen.

Ben Affleck

#48. What motivates every other decision artistically or technically is the acting. This is what motivates everything. Never can a camera move be incompatible with the emotion of the actor at that moment. The movement, the style, the atmosphere, everything is dictated by the actor.

Xavier Dolan

#49. I'm very in love with the fact that the camera is revolted by acting and loves behaviour.

Ben Kingsley

#50. 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

#51. I grew up around horses, but acting and riding on camera is a whole different thing.

Emilia Clarke

#52. I love acting. Acting's always been my first love. I grew up watching multi-camera television shows ... And I thought I would absolutely be in for that.

Seth Green

#53. I've wanted to do some sort of acting stuff down the line, but modeling is a good way to get comfortable in front of the camera.

Patrick Schwarzenegger

#54. I think I've found a purpose in acting; it's something I truly love and truly enjoy. It makes me happy. It makes me understand more about life, in front of the camera, than what I'm living beyond the camera.

Ranbir Kapoor

#55. That first year at Universal was a big blur and, naturally, I thought they were wasting me. I didn't realize at the time that I was learning my craft and acting more easily in front of the camera.

Kent McCord

#56. Acting time is like flight time: You can work on a simulator, you can rehearse, but unless you're really in front of the camera or on a stage - that's when you really learn how to work it.

John Kapelos

#57. I love being on stage or in front of the camera. My work brings me a lot of joy. It helps me figure out who I am. I'm really lucky that I get to make a living at acting.

Dana Delany

#58. With film acting, and often when the camera comes very close, you just have to think about something and the camera will pick it up.

Ruth Wilson