Acting Life Quotes

#1. I've always had a strange acting life. I'm the daughter of a director, and a very French, typical director who fell in love with every single one of his actresses. And that's also something that's kind of normal in the acting business, because everything is based on desire, one way or the other.

Lou Doillon

#2. I learned so much by being an actor, and part of my sort-of development as a writer is big thanks to the scripts I read in my acting life.

Joel Edgerton

#3. The acting life is different than I thought it would be. I love it - it's actually a lot less pressure than I thought it would be.

Melanie Lynskey

#4. By taking elements you observe in life, you can develop qualities in your acting life that you don't ordinarily call upon in your personal life.

Stella Adler

#5. If you think that a man who is any good at all should take into account the risk of life or death; he should look to this only in his action, whether what he does is right or wrong, whether he is acting life a good or a bad man.

Plato

#6. My professional acting life, stage and screen, has brought me public support, emotional fulfillment and material comfort. It has brought me together with fine people, good companions with whom I've shared the inevitable lot of all actors: flops and hits.

Peter O'Toole

#7. In terms of work, obviously acting is such a job that is very in the flesh kind of thing. It's your work, but it's your life, in a way. You can get so mixed up.

Gael Garcia Bernal

#8. 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

#9. Cosmopolis is the movie of my life. I didn't consider myself an actor before, even if I had 10 years of acting behind me. I always felt like a fraud, and inappropriate. I doubt a lot. David Cronenberg gave me confidence in myself. He changed my way of acting and thinking in this industry.

Robert Pattinson

#10. What made me fall in love with acting, which is my life, was watching other people perform. It made me hunger to do that.

Elisabeth Rohm

#11. Surely, 'tis one step towards acting well, to think worthily of our nature; and as in common life, the way to make a man honest, is, to suppose him soso here, to set some value upon ourselves, enables us to support the characterof generosity and virtue.

Laurence Sterne

#12. Life experiences become acting experiences, which in turn become life experiences.

Liv Ullmann

#13. I can only live my life in this way. I don't think I would be living it a different way if I wasn't acting.

Dakota Fanning

#14. 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

#15. I had given thought to acting, but I never really had a good enough opportunity or a character who made sense and paralleled my life a little bit. I feel like I'm one of the poster boys for a bad guy in a movie. I feel like I'm a good person to play a bad guy in a movie. I can say that.

Gucci Mane

#16. You need to be well versed with acting if you want to prove yourself good at every situation of life. Don't be too conscious about everything. Just let go and accept the good and bads!!

Nelson Jack

#17. That's what acting is all about - it's all about bringing truth from your own life, and putting it into your characters. If you have the advantage of using your own life in your work, that's always the way to go.

Michael Eklund

#18. I've done 480-odd films, have my own acting school, won awards, etc. and now host a successful TV chat show - what else can I ask for? Yes, of course, every journey has its ups and downs, but that's part of life.

Anupam Kher

#19. I've never worked with an acting coach, but my parents had acting classes and I grew up around them my whole life just because I didn't have a babysitter.

Blake Lively

#20. A wonderful acting teacher I love, Josh Pais, has a system I love for being in the moment in acting, but also in life. And one of the things he reminds me of is to take a moment and just be here now.

Alysia Reiner

#21. The important thing in acting is to be able to laugh and cry. If I have to cry, I think of my sex life. If I have to laugh, I think of my sex life.

Glenda Jackson

#22. I want to be able to have a conversation with people. I don't want to be stupid. I'd like to have a life outside acting.

Callan McAuliffe

#23. Music is definitely something that I'd like to pursue. It's probably, I mean, the acting and music are the two biggest things in my life.

Nolan Sotillo

#24. Acting is a life experience. I'm always learning things when I'm making a movie. So the fame part of it is fine when you consider what you get out of this job.

Kate Bosworth

#25. There is a microscopically thin line between being brilliantly creative and acting like the most gigantic idiot on earth.

Cynthia Heimel

#26. The better I am at observing moments in life, the better I'll be at showing them in my acting.

Oscar Isaac

#27. It wasn't right to have someone charge into you your world without even asking, acting as if you were nothing more than an egg to be flipped and flopped, sunny-side up or scrambled, depending on the whims on whoever ran your life ... _

Alice Hoffman

#28. I would have to change my entire life if I went into acting. I dance eight hours a day, and then suddenly to be sitting on a set for 12 hours a day is a big difference for my health.

Sarah Hay

#29. I tried acting, liked it, and stuck with it. I saw it as the way I would keep that promise to myself of getting back at those who had made my school life a misery.

Anthony Hopkins

#30. I have mainly been interested in acting. I think it's a great job, a fine way to live your life.

Jack Nicholson

#31. Balancing school, acting, and a social life can be difficult.

Emily Osment

#32. Acting will always be my first passion, it's what I live to do and I hope to be lucky enough to do it the rest of my life.

Devon Werkheiser

#33. Begin within. If it shows up in your life, it's coming to tell you something about you that you're acting like you don't know. Something about yourself, or your relationship with God.

Iyanla Vanzant

#34. 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

#35. 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

#36. At some point you have to stop acting as though life is happening to you and acknowledge the ways you are happening to it. Once you take responsibility for your side of the street, you grant yourself the power to improve every aspect of your life by simply acting and behaving differently.

Jillian Michaels

#37. 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

#38. Except that night didn't change my life. I changed it. I have to stop acting like I have no control over these things. Like I'm letting them just happen to me. These are my choices. For better or worse.

Hannah Harrington

#39. One of the great things about acting is you can do things that in real life would get you in trouble. I think that's something I figured out pretty early on.

Michael Shannon

#40. Acting is not my primary drive in life, although I'd be a very unhealthy person without it.

Greg Wise

#41. Storytelling is my currency. It's my only worth. The only thing of value I have in this life is my ability to tell a story, whether in print, orating, writing it down or having people acting it out.

Kevin Smith

#42. Knowing something and acting on it are not the same thing. Knowledge without the application of what has been learned is useless.

Peter James West

#43. Acting is so exciting to me. It's a thrill; otherwise I wouldn't do it. Not to be hokey, but I think life is definitely worth living, whether you're working or not. For an actor, the character is the thing ... it doesn't matter what medium you're in. as long as you have something to do.

Elizabeth Mitchell

#44. Acting is just a way of making a living, the family is life.

Denzel Washington

#45. I'm going to write a book, continue acting, continue motivational speaking and just share with people who I am and what I've learned in my second chance of life and pass it on to people in their first chance of life.

J. R. Martinez

#46. 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

#47. One of the most precious parts of acting is the work before you show up on the set, the time you spend being with your character before you bring that character to life. To me, that's the most rewarding part of it all. It feels very good to show up on a set just knowing that's with you.

Zoe McLellan

#48. To realize in an instant that you aren't going to have the life you'd hoped for, but not waste a moment complaining, instead acting instantly to save what good you can? That's more guts than I'd have had.

Brent Weeks

#49. Opponents of capital punishment argue that the state has no right to take a murderer's life. Apparently, one fact that abolitionists forget or overlook is that the state is acting not only on behalf of society, but also on behalf of the murdered person and the murdered person's family.

Dennis Prager

#50. Even the best Christian that ever lived is not acting on his own steam
he is only nourishing or protecting a life he could never have acquired by his own efforts.

C.S. Lewis

#51. Acting is pretty much my whole life.

Carol Kane

#52. What I enjoy most is travelling to different places and meeting new people. For me, it's all about life experiences, and I'm very grateful that acting allows me so many interesting and fulfilling ones.

Jensen Ackles

#53. Action on behalf of life transforms. Because the relationship between self and the world is reciprocal, it is not a question of first getting enlightened or saved and then acting. As we work to heal the earth, the earth heals us.

Robin Wall Kimmerer

#54. If my life were still a movie, this is the part that would end up on the cutting room floor. We were all just fill-ins for a long-running soap opera. The actors changed, but the story seldom did. Certainly not the action.

Charles Martin

#55. 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

#56. Sometimes distance was easier than acting, or explaining.

Laura Kaye

#57. I check all my props, everything. Acting is something I love. I have done it since I was 13 but it had completely taken over my life absolutely.

Barbara Windsor

#58. To be a great actor, you really don't need to go to acting school or learn dance classes or work on your body. You have to be intelligent. You have to draw on a lot of emotions that you go through in life that you can tap into once you work on a set.

Ranbir Kapoor

#59. Two young actresses I admire are Emma Stone and Emma Watson, because they are intelligent, talented actresses and have a great sense of humor. They have learned to balance what they love in life - acting, school and everything else.

Kara Hayward

#60. One actor in my life is enough, and that's me. With actors, it's too easy to go into this world of complaining. Someone will always be better, richer, more loved, do more work. Those dynamics don't interest me. The friends I hang out with, we create our own work rather than complain about acting.

Bojana Novakovic

#61. Acting should be bigger than life. Scripts should be bigger than life. It should all be bigger than life.

Bette Davis

#62. I'm 23, so I'm not done with my life. But acting, definitely, out of what I've done so far, makes me feel the most alive and is very invigorating and thrilling. So I figured I might as well try it for a while.

Grace Gummer

#63. Sometimes you're not supposed to enjoy it [acting]. You're supposed to cooperate with misery and proceed anyway. But what I do enjoy is a sense of well-being and just participating in life and life's turns.

Robert Downey Jr.

#64. To be an actress and act crazy is really fun for me, to be able to be acting like you'd never be able to act in your real life and scream and freak out. It's an interesting test for an actor.

Alexandra Daddario

#65. 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

#66. I suppose the best advice I ever got, frankly the advice that changed my life, came from my uncle who told me to go to drama school and study acting instead of taking a job, because he said the job would always be there.

Elizabeth Banks

#67. Acting has been my passion from the minute I started. I was pretty young when I wanted to be a doctor, but when I started doing theater work as a freshman in high school, the first time I hit the stage I was like, If I can do this every day, life won't get any better!

Sophia Bush

#68. I was a salsa dancer for the majority of my life, from, like, 7 to 17, and did the World Salsa Congresses. I realized that I wanted to continue obviously to be a performer. But in my household, being an actor and jumping into acting is not really accepted.

Gina Rodriguez

#69. Mr. Vesey, though, he didn't like any kind of talk about heaven. He said that was the coward's way, pining for life in the hereafter, acting like this one didn't mean a thing. I had to side with him on that.

Sue Monk Kidd

#70. I always felt like I needed to act. Not that I wanted to act, but I needed to. And I still feel that same way. There's an expression that I get to have in acting that I can't consciously express in my life. It has always defined me and it always will.

Dylan McDermott

#71. My parents are a big help, and they're always making sure I have a normal life and my life isn't all just about acting and stuff.

Cayden Boyd

#72. There are quite a few things that the devil could tempt me with ... I could be tempted by youth if I was allowed to hold on to all the wisdom that I've gotten. In everything, not just sports. In life. In acting. I'd be tempted by youth only so I could continue doing it a little longer.

George Clooney

#73. Nothing is more powerful than an individual acting out their conscience, thus helping bring the collective conscience to life.

Norman Cousins

#74. Acting and singing on 'One Tree Hill' was definitely one of the most incredible experiences of my life. I didn't even know I could act until I auditioned at the casting call for the part of Mia.

Kate Voegele

#75. They are the only honest hypocrites, their life is a voluntary dream, a studied madness.

William Hazlitt

#76. I love filmmaking, but I decided to go to drama school because I thought that when I'm 60 and looking back on my life, if acting hadn't been a part of it, I would hate myself.

Lupita Nyong'o

#77. I've never been passionate about acting, and I find more and more that I work to live the life I want to live. There's something about the detachment I have, the feeling of the lack of importance about what I do, that is healthy.

Jeremy Irons

#78. What I went into the acting business for was to have a certain amount of chaos in my life. I don't know what I'm doing next. It's exciting. That's the way I like it.

James Purefoy

#79. Always stay true to your nature. Anything that you are being hired for in any aspect of life whether it is a banking job, acting directing, whatever it is you have to stay true to who you are because they hired you to do what you do.

Anne Fletcher

#80. It was a wonderful life. To have a stage play right in this room, with real people acting real parts.

Jan Karon

#81. I'm a regular Canadian girl. I enjoy staying home. In the summer I've got a garden. I'm very much a homebody, a normal, family-oriented girl. But I do have this other incredible side of my life that involves acting and traveling.

Elisha Cuthbert

#82. Acting is the easiest money you'll ever make in your life, and directing is probably the hardest money.

Charles S. Dutton

#83. There are five stages in the life of an actor: Who's Mary Astor? Get me Mary Astor. Get me a Mary Astor Type. Get me a young Mary Astor. Who's Mary Astor?

Mary Astor

#84. I do have ambition - I can dress up for a premiere, get in a limousine, but it's not my life. My life is wearing jeans and tennis shoes and travelling on the metro. I have to do that because otherwise my acting is going to be false.

Caterina Murino

#85. My feeling is that you should try to do the things you enjoy most in life. I chose acting as a career because I enjoyed it then as I do now. The only question for me then was, 'Can I make a living at it?'

Bradford Dillman

#86. I'm not interested in becoming a bigger star, I'm not interested in being the wealthiest guy in the world. I'm doing fine, I love acting, and I want to do it for the rest of my life.

Seth Green

#87. When you start so young working, you build a hunger for acting, working, and a busy life.

Bonnie Wright

#88. Acting's fun, but life's more important.

Margot Kidder

#89. Acting is a marvelous profession ... If you can spend enough time playing other people, you don't have to think too much about your own character and motivations.

Dean Koontz

#90. Sometimes in the life of an actor you're not getting offered any jobs that speak to you. The trouble with acting is that you're only as good as your opportunities.

Ethan Hawke

#91. Acting's incredibly enjoyable, but sometimes it doesn't feel quite enough. I've also written a script about the life of Eleanor of Aquitaine. This will make me sound like a female Kenneth Branagh, but I can't think of anything nicer than directing myself from a script I wrote.

Honeysuckle Weeks

#92. I started classes and it wasn't because I was like, 'I want to be an actor!' - I was really interested in the theory of what acting can be and what it's about. It's all about living in the moment and kind of being present, which is something that at that time in my life I really wanted to explore.

Caity Lotz

#93. At school, I was a shy lad and still am. But acting gives me licence to be up there, demanding the focus. It's the one time in my life where I don't have to shout to be heard.

Emun Elliott

#94. You're like a big kid, aren't you?" I laugh. "Eh, yeah, I guess so. I don't see the point in acting like a stuffy old fart. Might as well have some fun with life. You're only here once.

Micalea Smeltzer

#95. I was probably 34 when I got my first on-camera acting job, and it was through a friend of mine, who was working as a writer on the show, and I've never been more frightened in my life.

Kurt Fuller

#96. Acting's not my whole life. My children definitely come first.

Meg Tilly

#97. When I was a kid, the idea of why I wanted acting to be the thing I do for the rest of my life was different. It was, Oh yeah, I'll get girls and be famous.

Edward Furlong

#98. I don't think my approach to acting is all necessarily in service of the character. I think, selfishly, I've put it in service of myself, my perspective on the world and helping my life.

Jake Gyllenhaal

#99. Acting requires a creative and compassionate attitude. It must aim to lift life up to a higher level of meaning and not tear it down or demean it. The actor's search is a generous quest for that larger meaning. That's why acting is never to be done passively.

Stella Adler

#100. We all have loads of information. What an actor does is bring it to the surface. I jump without a net because that's how I am. The information comes out because I am brave enough to allow it. I'm not brave as a human being in everyday life. I'm brave when I'm acting.

Charlotte Rampling