Top 100 Acting's Quotes
#1. When you're acting, everything is there around you, you just have to believe that it's real. When you're standing there with a slightly grey wig on and you have a baby in your arms screaming in your ear, you can go: "Well, I guess this is what it's like!"
Jim Sturgess
#2. I was 26 when I went to my first acting class. I'm naturally quite shy. I'm a quite private person. There's this really strange acting class in New York called Black Nexxus. For someone who's slightly shy or self-conscious, it's the most frightening thing you can do.
Hannah Ware
#3. You can't have bank holding companies acting as hedge funds. You can't have them taking a million-dollar pension plan for Joe Schmo the bus driver and treat it with the same risk appetite that you treat George Soros' pocket money. It's fundamentally ridiculous.
Shia Labeouf
#4. 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
#5. Movie stars are insecure like everyone else. That's why they go into acting!
Penny Marshall
#6. 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
#7. 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
#8. 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
#9. The thing I hate most in acting is asking permission to do things. What you really want to do is say, 'This is my need; this is what's going to get me further; this is what's going to be alive. I don't ever say, 'Do you mind if ... ?' I just come in and do it.
Lance Henriksen
#10. I have quite a normal family and I'm bored with how normal my family is. I want to mess stuff up a bit. I chose the messed up characters because I find that that's acting. I want to explore emotions that you otherwise wouldn't be able to explore.
Chloe Grace Moretz
#11. Acting is something that I always wanted, but I never paid attention to the notion that it might actually work out. You have all sorts of ideas about what you want to do - at one stage, I wanted to be a jockey - but this is the one that's a big deal.
Olivia Thirlby
#12. I've always approached acting from a passion point of view. It's what I love to do. The fact that you get paid is just a bonus
Katheryn Winnick
#13. I don't like to spend a lot of money on haircuts: I'll sometimes grow my hair and get an acting job and get them to cut it for free. I think for a lady, though, it's okay to spend a lot on a haircut.
Paul Dano
#14. It's very different. You do so many things in this play. You can't just focus on acting or singing. You have to be good at both. I'm very glad I did this play.
Will Davis
#15. 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
#16. Modelling is only about the look. In acting, it's the feel that matters.
Agyness Deyn
#17. Putin must be punished for violating the Budapest Memorandum, and Russia must learn that the U.S. will isolate it if it insists on acting like a rogue nation.
Rand Paul
#18. I do have a huge fascination for science, and I love to hear what my dad has to say. He used to take me into minor surgeries when I was a kid and let me watch, so I definitely have a passion for it, but it's not as big a passion as I have for acting and creating characters.
Daniela Ruah
#19. When I was a little kid, my parents would show me Marx Brothers' films and westerns and stuff like that. That's where all my desire to be an actor comes from and probably most of my understanding of acting comes from for sure.
Alden Ehrenreich
#20. 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
#21. 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
#22. I want to be a great actor someday, and I've decided there's no use philosophizing; the only way is to work at my craft.
Al Pacino
#23. As an actor, acting is like playing a sport. You do this thing that's intangible, and while it's happening, it's great. But then when it's done, there's really no tangible product. Someone else is capturing it and turning it into something tangible.
Chris Evans
#24. There is a perfect rout of characters in every man - and every man is like an actor's trunk, full of strange creatures, new & old. But an actor and his trunk are two different things
Wallace Stevens
#25. In my experience it's not essential to get on with the person that you're acting opposite.
Hugh Dancy
#26. Acting is something I've done since I was six years old, performing for my mum and my family in the living room, and I do it because my heart's in it.
Lily Cole
#27. On some level in acting, what you're trying to find is truth, because when it's true is when it's also funny.
David Hyde Pierce
#28. I really enjoy acting, and whether it's TV or films, I feel lucky to be doing it at all. In the end, I'd love to do films, but I'm not going to work just to do work. I only want to do something that I feel right about.
Amanda Bynes
#29. I think it's a shame when you come across young actors and musicians who haven't had the time to learn their craft. It doesn't matter if it's acting or music; you really have to learn how to do it from the bottom up because unless you have a great work ethic ... fame is a terrible thing to have.
Denis Leary
#30. That's the hardest part of acting: when it is ultra-personal, when it is deeply personal, and there's no lying involved. You can't fake it, you can't get by it. This is dealing with the most primal instincts and emotions that a mother can have.
Patricia Clarkson
#31. The theater is a kind of international language, and I like it. But I have a practical bent of mind, too. In any other field, I could make only about a tenth as much as I do acting. That's why I want to be a producer. It pays better, and you have more control.
Carolyn Jones
#32. But it's hard to sustain a successful acting career today.
James MacArthur
#33. But a quick-acting poison, that's different. It strikes with blind swiftness. You can be bit by temptation anytime. It is a thought, a direction, a noise in your brain, a hunch, an intuition that leads you to darker places than you've ever imagined. I
Louise Erdrich
#34. I'm far, far, far from that. But of course, that's one of the joys of acting is that you can move up in the world, even if - you know, in the characters that you're playing, even if you don't.
Maggie Smith
#35. 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
#36. I think acting for sure takes a lot of dedication, especially when you're starting out, because it's so much rejection and it's so important to really study and know your craft.
Bitsie Tulloch
#37. Acting is a win-win situation. There is no risk involved. That's why I get tired of hearing actors who try to make out that there's a downside to it. Fame is an odd thing. It bugs you a little bit, but it's really not bad.
John Corbett
#38. I would say that Emma Stone and Emma Watson are two very talented young actresses who are very intelligent and have a great sense of humor and have learned to balance what they love with their acting career, and I think that's really a great thing.
Kara Hayward
#39. I did direct two short movies. I learned many things, and one of the things I learned was that I am not a director. It has to be visceral, and it's not for me. I feel much more comfortable acting.
Vincent Cassel
#40. I love acting. It's an interesting challenge to make something that doesn't exist appear like it's happening, and to do it in a real way.
Ray Liotta
#41. I realized then that both Gladys and Norm were smiling at about the time I realized that Max and I were acting like lunatics.
"I don't think she's tied up in knots anymore, Gladie," Norm observed.
"She is, dear, just not ones she wants to untie," Gladys remarked.
Kristen Ashley
#42. Acting requires a lot of discipline to go with the obsession. It's a path of knowledge, and of self-knowledge. Sometimes you get lost on the path. And then you find yourself again.
Toni Servillo
#43. 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
#44. With big, emotional roles it's very easy, especially if you've grown up in the American school of acting, to exploit your own pain. You have to be careful about that, because 9 times out of 10, your pain is not appropriate to the character.
Laura Linney
#45. The urge to act became the overriding force in my life. It thrilled me. There's a moment with acting when you're in the groove, and you and what you're trying to do are seamlessly one. That happens sometimes, and I'm really happy it can happen to me.
Rupert Graves
#46. I really do consider myself quite fledgling in my acting career. I've only been doing it for 10 years and that's a short amount of time, really.
Ed Speleers
#47. Dude, writing, acting and directing are such easy jobs. But to do them all as awesomely as Zach Braff does, well that ... that's something.
Zach Braff
#48. This apartment is acting like nothing has changed. Everything has changed. I tell the walls he's gone.
Taylor Jenkins Reid
#50. I told everyone that acting's for losers and I needed to get an education. But something kept telling me to give it one last chance. In the end, I lasted a month on the M.B.A. and then decided to quit, come back to L.A., and try again.
Judi Shekoni
#51. I really enjoy acting. At home I can't even finish a sentence, and here I am reading these wonderful lines. I think it must be every housewife's dream, to be an actress part-time.
Meg Tilly
#52. Movie acting is about covering the machinery. Stage acting is about exposing the machinery. In cinema, you should think the actor is playing himself, if he's that good. It looks very easy. It should. But it's not, I assure you.
Michael Caine
#53. Acting, to me, has been many things: It's a business, and it's a craft, and it's a political act - it's whatever adjective is most applicable.
Adam Driver
#54. Now that was one thing, but from an actor's point of view, this poor young man, crying from the moment I opened the door to the moment he left. Now if an actor did that they would say he's over-acting.
Rod Steiger
#55. I never really wanted to grow up. I grew up really young. I moved out when I was 13 - that's when I started acting.
Helena Bonham Carter
#56. The most interesting thing about acting is when you go to the dark places, that's a lot of energy. When you go to the happiest places, it's also a lot of energy.
Jamie Foxx
#57. It's really fun to go back and forth from acting projects to directing projects. You don't have as much responsibility when you're acting, but you have more fun. But then you miss having that responsibility, and so you go back and torture yourself and make a movie.
Katie Aselton
#58. I make something I can look at and say, "That's a good piece of work, and there's some terrific directing and acting in it, and you should be proud of it."
Wes Craven
#59. It's all about story and character with me, and I don't care if the job is on daytime or prime time or the web. Hey, give me a good character and someone to listen, and I'll do my acting on a street corner.
Justin Hartley
#60. 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
#61. I always enjoyed writing. I did playlets in high school, I did radio shows in college. That's one of the reasons I went down to Second City, because you could do acting and writing.
Dan Castellaneta
#62. I understand acting and I understand actors. I don't really understand the world of celebrity. That's just bizarre. Those sorts of elements I'm at sea with.
Sam Neill
#63. Basically, editing is done in rehearsal and in the writing process and in the acting, so it's very, very tricky, very, very tricky.
Julie Delpy
#64. I love what I do, and for me, acting can be anything. It could be in America. It could be in India. It could be in England. It could be anything. As long as it's an interesting part and an interesting opportunity, I would love to do it.
Priyanka Chopra
#65. 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
#66. The actual time you're acting is miniscule compared to the time you're getting ready to do the work. The big difference on series television is, there's not a lot of hanging-out time. You're pumping those pages out, you're doing six, seven, eight pages a day. And I like that pace.
Joe Mantegna
#67. 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
#68. I think acting is definitely the most fulfilling, because it's the most challenging in my mind.
Estella Warren
#69. I went to my mum at about seven or eight and said I want to start acting, but the week before, I had said I wanted to do ballet. She said if I took acting classes for a full year, she would look further into it, and that's how it started.
Hailee Steinfeld
#70. Acting was always a part and faucet of my life. It just comes very natural. I think it's a good thing.
Nicki Minaj
#71. Beauty is nature's way of acting at a distance.
Denis Dutton
#72. 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
#73. So I will say this, "if any man marries just because of the emotions he feels towards a woman without first seeking the face of God to confirm if she is the suitable support needed for his life's assignment, such a man is acting in error.
Aderinsola Obasa
#74. It's a blessing and a curse. But it's not always the best situation to be in. As a profession, I don't recommend acting at all.
Armand Assante
#75. 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
#77. This city can be kind of brutal, so you see your dreams from every different angle, but ultimately it's about acting and if you enjoy acting, you will always enjoy acting.
Radha Mitchell
#79. Children all over the world do ridiculous, borderline dangerous things, and no one around them questions it, because it's ingrained in their culture. So it was with child acting in Southern California.
Mara Wilson
#80. If you don't love acting more than anything else, don't do it. It's not a normal life. It will take you away from your family, friends and life in general.
Johanna Braddy
#81. Take the wonder drug that cures all your ills, take Jeremiah Peabody's polyunsaturated, quick dissolving, fast acting, pleasant tasting, green and purple pills.
Ray Stevens
#82. Because Naughty Dog relies on their facial team to hand animate the faces of each game character and they do such a remarkable job, I think you can be more realistic with your acting. It gives the story and what's happening to you the feeling that it's a game.
Nolan North
#83. Acting is a weird profession. It's very disquieting, and at the time it just made me so confused. It's only when you step away from a movie for several weeks or months that you start to put things in perspective.
Jesse Eisenberg
#84. 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
#85. It was the most fun I've ever had on a movie. It was one of the happiest times in my life. I was living in New York, and I really enjoyed acting at the time. Also, it's funny because that was also the time when I went downhill.
Mickey Rourke
#86. 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
#87. What do I want to do? Acting wise? Well, there's a western that I want to do. There's a lot of producing that I want to do, projects that I have stacked up that are in my office that I'd like to get done.
Morgan Freeman
#88. Acting isn't really a creative profession. It's an interpretative one.
Paul Newman
#89. To me, acting is like a party. It's like a fun thing to do. You don't have to worry. You don't have to agonize about anything.
Rob Reiner
#90. [President Bush] recently challenged Iraqi soldiers still fighting U.S. troops like so: ... 'My answer is bring 'em on.' For those of you who may be criticizing Bush for acting like a movie cowboy, let me remind you. He's actually acting more like a movie cheerleader.
Jon Stewart
#91. The highs, the lows, the peaks, the valleys, whatever, it's all going to go into the art, whether I'm singing or acting or whatever.
Jill Scott
#92. There's a very fine line between underacting and not acting at all. And not acting is what a lot of actors are guilty of. It amazes me how some of these little numbers with dreamy looks and a dead pan are getting away wit it. I'd hate to see them on stage with a dog act.
Joan Blondell
#93. It's no surprise that optimistic athletes, managers and teams do better. What's interesting is where they do better. It's in coming back from defeat and acting in the clutch.
Martin Seligman
#94. So don't come in here acting like you matter. You left and took your high horse with you," he takes another step in my direction. My throat constricts.
He's not finished, "And you show up here at my club thinking you can just waltz right in and have a say? No bitch.
Bink Cummings
#95. I recognize that I have a unique position to be a role model to young girls because I am doing something that they consider glamorous, which is acting, and yet I took a time to really get my education and study mathematics, and I think math is the cat's meow.
Danica McKellar
#96. I grew up in Bellport, Long Island where I attended Gateway Acting School and met Robin Allan. She was the school's director who took me under her wing and was the one who told me that I could do this for real.
Brendan Dooling
#97. When you have a book as material as it is, it's a lot easier to create a character because you have so many resources to draw upon when acting.
Asa Butterfield
#98. It's easy to play a bad girl: You just do everything you've been told not to do, and you don't have to deal with the consequences, because it's only acting.
Eliza Dushku
#99. What I love about photography, and it's the same thing I love about acting, really, is that it forces you, like, right into the moment, where you can't be distracted, where you can't be, like, thinking about other things or ahead of yourself or behind yourself.
Jessica Lange
#100. 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
