Top 100 Acting Hard Quotes
#1. Before doing stand-up, I thought acting was easy - it's not easy. It's a hard life. It's easy in its own way, you just stand there and talk. But there is a difference between people who can do it well and people who can't.
Jim Jefferies
#2. I don't have a passion for TV or movies or acting. I have a passion for wrestling and I find it hard to leave that for TV and movies. But if it is a thing that is a short amount of time I would consider it, but wrestling is what I love to do!
Daniel Bryan
#3. I think acting is a gift. I look at someone like Ben Kingsley, and he's incredibly charismatic, even when he's not acting. He's an incredibly hard worker, and he has a very specific system that he does with his work.
Jonathan Jackson
#4. I'm striving toward this acting thing. I'm definitely gonna work hard on that, whatever comes my way, I'm gonna work hard on it.
Mary J. Blige
#5. We must begin by acknowledging a hard truth. We will not eradicate violent conflict in our lifetimes. There will be times when nations, acting individually or in concert, will find the use of force not only necessary but morally justified.
Barack Obama
#6. Acting is a hard way to make a living, and there's a kind of dark, somewhat seedy side to the whole aspect of fame and celebrity that's not really something I would want for my child - or want him to want, if that makes any sense.
Pablo Schreiber
#7. I started writing because it was hard to find acting jobs. I didn't like any monologues in auditions, so I started to write my own things. Since then, I have written a couple of shows. I was nominated for playwright of the year for a play I wrote called 'Potential Space.'
Kirsten Vangsness
#8. 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
#9. 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
#10. I didn't pursue acting as a career until I got my first job. I didn't think I could make a living at it. You hear such horror stories about how hard it is to get work as an actor. It is hard, but I decided to roll with it.
Mary Page Keller
#11. It is indeed hard for the strong to be just to the weak, but acting justly always has its rewards.
Eamon De Valera
#12. 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
#13. With acting, you are a small part of the creative process, and sometimes it is hard to feel like you are making an impact.
John Cho
#14. What I love about the theater is that you know who you're acting for: your audience. And the thing I find really hard in film is, you don't. The audience is invisible. And we're sitting there, hoping there's other people out there.
Cate Blanchett
#15. It's been great, I have to dig deep for really raw emotions and at the same time I have to use my intellect to say the ridiculous medical jargon while acting and treating a patient and then I have to try to have a personality and emotions as well. So it is definitely hard work.
John Leguizamo
#16. So, I certainly subscribe to what Bette said about acting being very hard work.
Marie Windsor
#17. The acting part is easy; it's the preparing - lifting weights and getting your body in tip-top shape - that's the hard part.
Chaske Spencer
#18. But it is a hard, it's a hard profession teaching acting.
Dabney Coleman
#19. I always feel like a doctor who loses a patient on the operating table or something where I felt just devastated and I beat myself up until I get to try it the next night and "I'll get it better tonight." So I'm hard on myself. I think I'm not alone in that regard with acting.
Allison Janney
#20. Why stash little ones away in a nursery downstairs with volunteers, who are hard to recruit and who themselves then miss the service, when they can actually be part of God's people in worship? This can make it hard sometimes when children are acting up. But it keeps families together.
Christian Smith
#22. When I was in my teens, I thought, 'Would I like to try and work hard at being an actor, or do I want to work hard at doing something musical?' Acting won out, but I do really enjoy those moments where I get to just belt something out.
Emilia Clarke
#23. I love acting and don't find it to be very hard. I recognize when I've nailed it, and I can be very proud of myself.
Ewan McGregor
#24. Maybe that's why there's an insecurity sometimes in acting, because it's not like there's a correlation between hard work and how people receive you.
Owen Wilson
#25. I studied acting for five years. I quit college at that point. You know, I go hard. When I know I'm supposed to go in a direction, I'm fully committed and I go all the way. Everything falls to the side and I'm all in. So I completely dove into acting even though I was almost 30.
Sonja Sohn
#26. Hugh Jackman really inspired me as a kid. He's a cool Aussie guy who works very hard, and he's a fantastic actor. Obviously, he keeps really fit. He seems like he's happy acting. Who knows if he really is, but he gives you that impression.
Brenton Thwaites
#27. It's really hard to run a business against somebody who is not acting as if it were in business.
Bill Gurley
#28. I would like to know that I was still going to be employed as a woman well into my 60s. In acting terms, a career that spans a lifetime is a very hard thing to achieve, particularly as a woman.
Romola Garai
#29. What I believe will make my acting career successful going forward is hard work. I like to challenge myself. Then it's the people I meet and choosing the projects I want to work on correctly. There's a lot of characters I can play.
Barkhad Abdi
#30. It was jarring to be berated for 'acting white' when I was placed in a predominantly black middle school in Southern California. I was also chubby, into boys who weren't into me, and tried too hard to fit into this 'blackness' I was supposed to be.
Issa Rae
#31. I miss Texas so bad. That's the hard part about being out here in L.A., trying to pursue acting and music and lighting and production and stuff. It takes a lot of time out from your personal life, and I can only get back to Texas three times a year at most. It's tough.
Jackson Rathbone
#32. Acting is not glamorous. It's not. Anybody who wants to get into acting for the glamour is in for a hard time.
Emmanuelle Chriqui
#33. Coming from dance, I feel acting is - I'm not going to say easy, because it's not. But the dance world is more hard-core.
Mia Wasikowska
#34. It's hard to act in the morning. The muse isn't even awake.
Keanu Reeves
#35. I committed a sin the day I refused you - I discovered metal inside me where my heart should be - forgive me, Love, for acting on principles ...
John Geddes
#36. You've helped me for years." His brows pull hard. "Now it's time I help you, and I'm not acting like you're a leper because this guy tells me to. You may be fucking weird as hell when you and Rose start verbally sparring, but you're my weirdo best friend. That's not changing.
Krista Ritchie
#37. Acting is really scary, but it's also challenging, fun, hard work. There's always an element of improvisation with every actor, even when something is really scripted.
Michael Pitt
#38. I love babies - I love being with them. As for acting with them, it's kind of hard because they don't know how to act.
Tim Daly
#39. I want to do acting as much as I can. When you're on contract with a show, you can't really do other shows. It's hard to do film. I haven't had the opportunity to even audition much for films because I don't have an agent.
Retta
#40. I've always appreciated great acting performances, but I've even learned to appreciate not so great ones 'cause it's hard.
Zoe Bell
#41. It's very hard to tell an actor, 'Stop acting.' It's easy to tell a non-actor, because they're embarrassed when they act. They get ashamed when they do something cliche, whereas an actor is happy.
John Carney
#42. Home gigs can be hard because it's an odd collision. More than anything, I feel self-conscious when my family are in the audience. I'm doing this job which is not quite acting - part of it is me, part performance. You're presenting a cartoon of yourself to people who know you as a line-drawing.
Dylan Moran
#43. I am very driven. I work really hard, whether it's acting or my charity or even poker. When I focus on something I give it my all.
Shannon Elizabeth
#44. The head of the CIA, it seems to me, would think long and hard before he admitted that former employees of his had been involved in the murder of the President of the United States-even if they weren't acting on behalf of the Agency when they did it.
Jim Garrison
#45. I've always found that acting has been quite a hard thing to pre-manage because so much of it is spontaneous and the circumstances so uncontrolled.
Max Minghella
#46. I like to remind myself how hard acting is. I do parts in friends' stuff.
Adam McKay
#48. I think that acting is no fun unless it's hard. I'm not titillated by acting or being an actor unless I have to work hard.
Bob Odenkirk
#50. I wanted to be an actor when I saw the movie 'Die Hard.' I saw Bruce Willis shooting guns and blowing stuff up, and I thought, 'I wanna do that.' It really had nothing to do with acting; I just wanted a job that allowed me to do fun, bigger-than-life stuff.
Zach Gilford
#51. Honestly, I wish I'd known just how hard it is and how competitive the acting world is. I took my time; I went at my own pace. That's been helpful over the years, but also, I didn't quite realize how incredible everyone else was going to be: the level of competition and everyone's skill.
Max Von Essen
#52. It's always hard to be private in public, which is what acting is because you have to do thing really emotionally naked.
Viola Davis
#53. I'm 35 but because I've been acting professionally playing women since I was eighteen years old - I never played a teenager - people constantly think I'm like ten years older than I am, which is a little hard on my ego.
Laura Benanti
#54. There's nothing hard about acting except the long hours.
Fred Thompson
#55. If it's well written and well directed and you've got good actors to work with, acting is easy. But making sure all the ducks are in a row is the hard part. It's very rare.
John Lithgow
#56. It's hard to get money to support your [non-profit] organization if you have no evidence. It's very much like the acting business: You need an agent and manager so you can get a job to get resources, but you can't get an agent and a manager unless people see your work.
Sonja Sohn
#57. I have done hard jobs in the past, and acting isn't one of them.
Graham McTavish
#58. It is so hard for musicians when they step into acting is they're not coming in as a blank slate, they're coming in with a real set idea of who they are, where they're coming from, what their politics are, what their tastes are.
Shirley Manson
#59. When I'm not excited, it makes acting very hard for me.
Paul Dano
#60. My first trip abroad was to do a TV version of 'Les Miserables' in France with Anthony Perkins. There I was at 12 acting with the guy from 'Psycho.' My parents were teachers, and it was hard for them to relate to that world.
Dexter Fletcher
#61. I was a swimsuit model, and I got bored. Acting was challenging. It was very hard and intimidating. We choose to do things in life sometimes that scare the crap outta us. Performing in front of people was my challenge.
Christa Campbell
#62. I don't get a rush from anything. I did music as hard as I could. Acting for me at least, is a far more restrained performance than music. It requires a lot of skill and discipline. I'm not any good at it but I enjoy trying to be good at it.
Henry Rollins
#63. There will be times when you just can't seem to land an acting job, and you feel like giving up. Don't! The only way to realise that dream is to keep working hard for it.
Sam Claflin
#64. I couldn't direct traffic.It's hard enough just acting.
Mickey Rourke
#65. I was 16 when I quit gymnastics and decided to start acting. I started booking immediately after. I was very lucky and fortunate, but I also did the hard work. Half of it's hard work and half of it's luck. It's been working out so far. Fingers crossed for the future.
Nina Dobrev
#66. Any acting job that I ever got, I always treated it like I was a neophyte; I didn't know what I was doing, and I was going to work just as hard as I do on my stand-up.
Patton Oswalt
#67. To me, acting is all about hard work and talent. Once you get your first wrinkle, if you are a female actress, nobody will care about what you look like - it's all about what you can do.
Dominik Garcia-Lorido
#68. I was in acting classes from the age of 9, dance classes, music classes - my mom put a lot of energy and attention into me, so no matter what happened in my life, I always had this basis of discipline. So I really worked hard for everything I had from a very early age.
Milla Jovovich
#69. Acting is trying to be absolutely truthful; to get audiences to believe that you are a dean, when, actually, not only are you not the dean, but if you walked into the building they'd probably throw you out. That's very hard.
Wallace Shawn
#70. I came out to California to live with my mom in Orange County for a while, and then I came up to Hollywood. I had just turned nineteen. I took an acting class at Playhouse West and decided, 'Wow, I think I can do this!' I studied really hard for three years before I got an agent.
Jamie Anne Allman
#71. Movie acting may not have a certain kind of glory as true art, but it is damn hard work.
William Holden
#72. But it's hard to sustain a successful acting career today.
James MacArthur
#73. You know, it's hard for me to, like, act the way I've been acting and, like, being, like, nice to everyone. And I feel, like, I deserve to be acknowledged for that.
Aaryn Gries
#74. It's hard talking about acting, in a way, because it's like explaining a joke: I do think it loses something in the telling.
Martin Freeman
#75. I see all these people talking about acting as a great spiritual thing. It's not. There's no great mystery to acting. It's a very simple thing to do, but you have to work hard at it. It's about asking questions and using your imagination.
Eddie Marsan
#76. Movies are hard to make, and you have to work toward a common ethic and do your best. You don't want to work with people who don't care or who are acting out some neurotic, crazy thesis on the set.
Robert De Niro
#77. I do love writing. It doesn't come to me as readily as I think acting does. I think acting is in my instincts. Writing is a craft that I work very hard at. And I have to train and continue to develop.
David Dastmalchian
#78. I have my own method [of acting]. I come from, I've interrogated people; I come from an undercover background, so it's hard to teach an old dog new tricks.
Mekhi Phifer
#79. When I talk to people and I get animated, I touch them and am very physically involved. It's actually been really hard, but it's an acting challenge.
Meaghan Rath
#80. If some of us can get an Oscar for extolling that it's hard out there for a pimp, why can't others of us admonish: 'Then quit acting like a pimp'?
John Ridley
#81. In Polmont, everyone was acting the hard man and giving it the large. I had to fight or cosh or do something to be accepted. I can tell you, it was better to be in a gang than being on your own, and I'd do anything in Polmont, no questions asked!
Stephen Richards
#82. People might think writing is a hard business, but it's nowhere near acting.
Kate Morton
#83. When I was younger, I thought I had to shut myself off, work really hard to cry. I learned after a while that that's just not ... You know, often in life, you cry when you're caught off-guard. That's where I need to be when I'm acting, too.
Julianne Moore
#84. When you're acting you put so much of yourself into working. As much fun as it is, it's still hard work and it's still a challenge.
Dakota Fanning
#85. Acting is really important to me, so I think it would be really hard for me to do something I didn't believe in.
Maggie Gyllenhaal
#86. You don't understand guys Norah, we don't always think, we just do. It's hard for us to focus clearly sometimes and we end up just acting on impulse, which isn't always a smart thing.
Angela Richardson
#87. One of the hard things in my life has been balancing my education with my acting career, because I've been acting since the age of seven, on and off, just doing little parts and things. I've always been very keen to stay in school.
Anna Popplewell
#88. I never dreamed that shooting a film would be so hard. There was less regulation then of child actors' hours. Even the concept of acting confused me.
Tatum O'Neal
#89. Christians are notorious for acting like used car salesmen, treating non-Christians as if they're standing there holding a blank check and sporting a hard-on for unreliable vehicles.
Orlando Winters
#90. I like finding stuff that I suck at and trying to get better. So I'm taking classes, getting myself comfortable in an acting scene. You've got to work out those ticks. For instance, standing up used to be really hard for me. I act much better if I'm sitting down.
Bill Burr
#91. I have to work extra hard because I am dyslexic. People said that I couldn't be an actress, but I'm proving them wrong. Acting has helped me overcome the challenge.
Bella Thorne
#92. I would be an actress for the rest of my life just because it's really relaxing. Writing is hard work, and stand-up is so stressful before you get on stage, but acting is a complete ensemble experience.
Kristen Schaal
#93. Everything about acting drives me and gives me the need to really try it. It's an evolution - doing the same thing for 12 years is kind of a chunk. Anyone would be up for a little bit of a change. It is so rewarding to do a movie, and so enjoyable. It's hard work, but really wonderful.
Agyness Deyn
#94. Acting is hard work. At times, it's very energizing and enervating. It's childish. It's also responsible. It's illuminating, enriching, joyful, drab. It's bizarre, diabolical. It's exciting.
Al Pacino
#95. 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
#96. He knows that there's no better way in the world to aggravate somebody who's trying to make it hard for you than by acting like you're not bothered.
Ken Kesey
#97. People often ask me, was it hard to play this person or that person? Well, no, not really. Acting is what I do. It's my job.
Samantha Morton
#98. I'm all about working. I'm a really hard worker, and I'm taking advantage of all those different opportunities, on the music and acting side, because I love both.
Diego Boneta
#99. If I could wave a magic wand and be anything, I'd be a really respected, really successful author. That's a hard combination to get, though. I really enjoy acting, and it's easier, frankly.
Christine Elise
#100. Every role is approached in exactly the same way, you have to make it believable and that's all. Acting is really serious, like, pretending really hard.
Stanley Tucci
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