Acting People Quotes

#1. Did Anthony Hopkins really have to be a serial killer to be in 'Silence of the Lambs?,' I don't think so, no. It's called acting, people.

Bryan Batt

#2. 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

#3. I went through a period of pulling away from everything - acting, people - not sure if I would ever have a voice in this business.

Selma Blair

#4. I think there is a lot of overexplaining both in writing and acting. People don't need to be hit on the head.

Clive Owen

#5. Perhaps being old is having lighted rooms inside your head, and people in them, acting. People you know, yet can't quite name.

Francois De La Rochefoucauld

#6. 'Johnny' was always a lone wolf when he got on stage. Him against the world, whereas suddenly, when I got into acting, people were relying on me.

Johnny Vegas

#7. 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

#8. People always ask me if I'm going to stop modeling because I have started an acting career. I hope to continue to model for years to come.

Tyra Banks

#9. 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

#10. Having a chance to be someone other than yourself and to act out stuff that makes people look at you, like, wow, and that's why I love acting so much.

Quinton Aaron

#11. Obviously there are times with acting when exactly what is required is just going through the motions, and when doing nothing is the best thing. But at other times, you have to make that leap beyond the immediate environment of people putting up lights on the set.

Christian Bale

#12. I need to work with great directors and actors, people who are better than me, so that I am challenged. It is like playing sports - surfing, basketball, it doesn't matter what it is, if you play with people who are better than you, then you get better too. It is the same thing with acting.

Paul Walker

#13. For me, acting in scenes with other people is like playing soccer with a bunch of legless five year olds. It's not really fair to them, but what else can I do, you know?

Zach Braff

#14. 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

#15. It doesn't work that way, you know, because most parts that you think you'd do well, most other people don't. So they offer you something - The Avengers is a good example ... I fitted into that because I came from that sort of background. It's not even acting.

Patrick Macnee

#16. 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

#17. In acting class they tell you that you have to be real, connect with the people, connect with your partner. The same as politics, you have to connect to the people.

Arnold Schwarzenegger

#18. So I don't think I'm gonna pull my head into my shell just because a bunch of people start acting like idiots.

Todd Rundgren

#19. I feel as though, as an actor, you can only make brave choices when you're acting with people that you're so relaxed with that you can make a mistake.

Jaime Murray

#20. I thought people wouldn't take me seriously if too much acting was involved in the singing. But now I love the idea of mixing everything together.

Charlotte Gainsbourg

#21. In its most fundamental sense, execution is a systematic way of exposing reality and acting on it. Most companies don't face reality very well ... Realism is the heart of execution, but many organizations are full of people who are trying to avoid or shade reality. Why? It makes life uncomfortable.

Lawrence Bossidy

#22. I always think I love work, and I knew early on that I wanted to be an actress. Then I meet people who have truly dedicated their lives to acting, and I realise that I'm so completely in the back seat.

Natascha McElhone

#23. I took an acting class. After the first day, the teacher quit, so they said take another. When I saw 'How to be a Stand-up Comedian,' it resonated. I realized I'd rather make 200 people laugh than make one person cry.

Wendy Liebman

#24. I think a lot of people, if they get the opportunity to do some acting, they think, 'I might be a star.'

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar

#25. Attraction isn't wrong. People can't help who they are drawn to and they certainly can't control affinity, as uncommon as it is. What is wrong is acting on inclination if it hurts someone else, namely a significant other.

Donna Lynn Hope

#26. Acting is like sex: you either do it and don't talk about it, or you talk about it and don't do it. That's why I'm always suspicious of people who talk too much about either.

Humphrey Bogart

#27. They're a very strange lot actors, very strange people.

Ben Kingsley

#28. I started acting because I was miserable and crazy and wanted to be someone else, to run around and scream in front of people without getting in trouble.

Michael Shannon

#29. I think acting is revealing to people what it means to be human.

Nick Enright

#30. What used to frustrate me going into an audition was that some inexperienced, lesser casting people would think that actors are acting only when they're speaking.

Bryan Cranston

#31. One of the reasons I love acting is because I'm so interested in other people's lives, and I often incorporate things I hear or observe into my work. I've become a bit of a 'person addict,' and so I like brushing up against lots of different characters.

Jason Alexander

#32. Acting gets into your blood, after so many years, and I just always like revisiting it. It's fun to meet new people and watch them coming along, at different stages of their careers.

Clint Eastwood

#33. Going back to Georgiana Drew and John Drew, and my great-grandfather Maurice Barrymore, and it was such a sort of circus of odd, interesting people that loved acting.

Drew Barrymore

#34. I don't think people who have children are acting selfishly or unselfishly. Having a child who'll be loved, to parents who love each other, is the important thing.

Terry Jones

#35. No one is truly free, they are a slave to wealth, fortune, the law, or other people restraining them from acting according to their will.

Euripides

#36. At acting school people didn't speak like me. It was all received pronunciation - 'ow now brown cow.'

Ray Winstone

#37. 'm not saying I would never do acting again, because I love it, but there really is nothing compared to getting up in front of people and singing your music.

Schuyler Fisk

#38. Acting is a very limited form of expression and those who take it seriously are very limited people. I take it seriously.

Judy Holliday

#39. I don't believe in acting. I think that people in life act, but when you are on the stage or, in my case, also on screen, you have to be true.

Luise Rainer

#40. There are ways of avoiding becoming tabloid fodder and therefore giving people license to pry into your private life. And there's a distinction between being an actor and being a celebrity. You may become a celebrity through acting, but you don't need to do so.

Damian Lewis

#41. I went from sort of trying to get work to all of a sudden being signed up for the next few years on something, and something of this scale with some of the best people in the business involved, acting and directing. It was a dream.

Chris Hemsworth

#42. I've done quite a few adverts. I've also done some presenting and acting work in Spain. I did a lot of Spanish education videos for people wanting to learn English.

Christopher Parker

#43. The disaster at Johnstown was one that need never have happened and a powerful reminder that it can be terribly dangerous, even perilous, to assume that because people hold positions of responsibility they are therefore acting responsibly.

David McCullough

#44. 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

#45. That's the joy of acting - you get to play people who are not you; you get to explore the dark, hidden sides of yourself.

Julie Kavner

#46. Tom Cruise shouldn't try to win Oscars. He should just smile and kick people in the face and leave the acting to Hugh Jackman. Why Hugh Jackman? I dunno; come up with your own example, smart-ass.

Doug Benson

#47. People still make New Year's resolutions? Wow. I figured those were pointless once I perfected myself by directing, writing, and acting in Garden State. I guess it makes sense, though. It gives people a chance to hope that they can become as great as me someday.

Zach Braff

#48. I've never gone to acting school and I never will, so I'm learning about the business from the people who are in the business. It doesn't seem like I work at all. And the unknown is always exciting.

Jonathan Rhys Meyers

#49. I'm sure at one point I will do some acting again, but it would have to be the right thing. I'm not going to do it just because people are offering it to me. Not for those box-office, bullshit, money, noncreative people. But I'll do it when it's right to do it.

Lenny Kravitz

#50. When I was in acting classes early on, there were so many people in these classes who were doing great work, and you'd just look at them and say, 'Wow, I hope to someday be like that.' And yet these people never worked. You never saw them.

Mark Harmon

#51. I generally like grey roles. My interpretation of drama is different from the popular perception. Acting, for me, is not about overplaying, it is about concealing. I like flawed characters that people relate to. I would never do a romcom.

Emraan Hashmi

#52. When people say things like "don't let this moment pass without acting on gun control," what they're really saying is our arguments are so unpersuasive that they can only succeed when people aren't thinking clearly.

Glenn Reynolds

#53. I used to be a chemical-engineering student, but I started studying acting, and I went for a cattle call, up against hundreds of people. They tore me down because I was too tall. They said "How tall are you?" "6'5"." "Next.

Dolph Lundgren

#54. I've learned by watching films that inspired me and people who inspired me like Robert Redford and Paul Newman. I love old school acting. I love subtlety, and I also love being spontaneous, and that's really what works for me.

Alex Pettyfer

#55. Since nobody is in a position to substitute his own value judgments for those of the acting individual, it is vain to pass judgment on other people's aims and volitions. No man is qualified to declare what would make another man happier or less discontented.

Ludwig Von Mises

#56. 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

#57. Acting is a child's prerogative. Children are born to act. Usually, people grow up and out of it. Actors always seem to me to be people who never quite did grow out of it.

Joanne Woodward

#58. I would just like to be able to give to people through acting. If I can entertain people by being somebody else and allow somebody to feel something, then that makes me feel good.

Melanie Griffith

#59. Why would you want to act, anyway?" was Seth's take on the subject. "Stand there and say other people's words, let everybody else tell you what to do ... Actors are just beautiful puppets.

Rainbow Rowell

#60. One of the things that is interesting about reading conspiracy theory is that much of what folks think is conspiracy is really many people acting in concert to make or protect their money.

Catherine Austin Fitts

#61. Acting and writing go together. Actors write because they love words and becoming other people - we love to escape into other characters.

Susannah York

#62. I don't see many people with longevity anymore. Everything was harder when I started, and you had to take acting lessons, do theater parts, work on connections and then get lucky. The technology is good, but it's also a hindrance for longevity.

Dustin Diamond

#63. The problem with acting is that there's really no control. You're at the behest of others. Everyone else decides if you did a good job and you have to wait for other people's permission to work as an actor.

Leigh Whannell

#64. People talk about the difference between radio acting, TV acting and stage acting, but I think it's all the same. For instance, when I played Vultan in 'Flash Gordon,' I put as much energy into it as I would with 'King Lear' - it's all part of the same thing.

Brian Blessed

#65. I'm so not a performer, my drive to do [acting] is so different to other people - and I'm not discrediting that, they're born performers, they're people that you love to watch just be themselves. I like to be a little bit more in control. I like to make something.

Kristen Stewart

#66. When you're in your early 20s, a lot of characters can be one or two dimensional. You want a role to substantiate the drama, as opposed to actually analyzing the psychology of a human being. That's what drew me to acting, particularly the contradictions in people.

Tom Hughes

#67. 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

#68. Acting is a question of absorbing other people's personalities and adding some of your own experience.

Paul Newman

#69. 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

#70. My background is really being a writer's actor - that seems to be the way I work best, bringing out the best of writing. There's a whole range of acting skills, and some people can be astonishing with very poor material. That's not me; my skill is essentially unlocking the writing.

Lindsay Duncan

#71. We don't think of them as acting, but we take on certain characteristics based on where we function, and those relationships draw out aspects of who we are as people. And that's what acting is. Different parts draw out different parts of your nature.

Peter Riegert

#72. The NYPD must stop acting like the only thing black people do is run from them and shoot at them. Believe it or not there are some black New Yorkers who won't run and can't shoot
they're called the # Knicks .

Bill Maher

#73. Don't let the world define you. In the world of acting, and I think in any profession, really, people are really eager to put you in a box and categorize you as one particular thing.

Jonathan Groff

#74. We find the general work of mankind is being carried on from day to day by the mass of people acting in harmony as if by instinct. If they were instinctively violent, the world would end in no time.

Mahatma Gandhi

#75. 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

#76. Because of acting I've gotten to travel and meet so many amazing people, and they inspire new songs.

Emily Kinney

#77. You can't expect to draw people into your life who are kind, confident, and generous if you're thinking and acting in cruel, weak, and selfish ways. You must be what it is that you're seeking- that is, you need to put forth what you want to attract.

Wayne Dyer

#78. My acting is atrocious, to say the least. But I've found that it's not acting that people are concerned about, it's your presence.

Chuck Norris

#79. I suppose once in a while, a filmmaker makes a movie that's more than just a sum of its parts, more than good acting or good filmmaking. It's something else that has nothing to do with what you've done. This is in 1999, made by people in 1999 for people in 1999 about people in 1999.

Sam Mendes

#80. Movie actors are just ordinary, mixed-up people - with agents.

Jean Kerr

#81. In Chicago it's really a case of the play's the thing - people are just so happy to be acting, you know? We were all actors - not like in New York or Los Angeles, where everyone says they are actors but they are actually waiting tables and hustling for spots in commercials.

John C. Reilly

#82. Many people think voice over artists just read, there's much more to it. Without acting beats, scene study and improving skills, you won't make it.

Tara Strong

#83. You can act, or you can't. I'm sure a lot of people who are serious about acting would disagree, but I'm not really worried about them.

Chelsea Handler

#84. Ultimately, the idea of acting is to understand the people you're playing, and then where they're coming from is not so mystifying. You've got to detox a bit after, though.

Joseph Mawle

#85. In acting, you have to pull from real-life situations, from people, to help develop a character.

Kevin Hart

#86. I need to go where people are serious about acting.

Meryl Streep

#87. I'd been in Hollywood for five years before I started writing 'The Guild.' I worked enough to pay all my bills. So I was very lucky in that respect. Most people don't make a living acting.

Felicia Day

#88. 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

#89. 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

#90. An acting career usually has about a shelf life of ten years before people get sick of seeing you. It's a good thing to have a job to fall back on and I really do enjoy directing.

George Clooney

#91. The people I respect in the history of acting, from the beginning, were chameleons.

Theo Rossi

#92. Every film by Will Smith, Harry Belafonte, Sidney Poitier, Lena Horne, Ruby Dee, Don Cheadle will have great acting and carry good messages in the film. The films starring those actors are the films I tell young people to watch for good acting and to view for quality movies.

Brian J. White

#93. I believe people instinctively know that about writing, yet people get confused about that when it comes to acting.

Chiwetel Ejiofor

#94. I've always held to the belief, though, that people who do too much acting training always look like they're acting, you know?

Noah Taylor

#95. My thinking is lot more different with many actresses in the industry. I don't understand why people in showbiz put their profession of acting in the back seat after marriage.

Kareena Kapoor Khan

#96. In my opinion, if you want to pursue an art, especially acting, you have to be really perceptive of what people go through. There is so much bad in the world, and I think that acting it out and exploring it almost helps you deal with it.

Rita Volk

#97. Good acting is good acting, however you learn it. Some people who haven't studied are amazing. Some people like Leonardo DiCaprio are naturally gifted - he's learned technique by working with people early on.

Sam Rockwell

#98. Of course, when I say that human nature is gentleness, it is not 100 percent so. Every human being has that nature, but there are many people acting against their nature, being false.

Dalai Lama

#99. To start telling people that you're beautiful, or just feel beautiful, just start acting like you are the most beautiful woman in the world. And it really improves everything! Because your sort of psyche responds to it - like this is truthful!

Margaret Cho

#100. 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