Top 100 Actor Quotes
#1. Being an actor is such a humiliating experience because you are selling yourself to the public, your face, your personality, and that is humiliating. As you get older, it becomes more humiliating because you've got less to sell.
Katharine Hepburn
#2. My mother told me I was begging her to be an actor when I was four. My father and my grandfather saw at least one or two movies a week; they were film buffs, so I guess it just rubbed off on me. And now it's kind of become a way of life for me.
Giovanni Ribisi
#3. Once you become an actor, it's important to take care of yourself. I live in Santa Monica, where I can mountain bike, hike and go running on the beach. I like a nice sunset jog.
Mark Feuerstein
#4. There's no one actor in particular that I want to model my career after, except for the people who have been able to keep their career varied and who choose things that interest them. That opportunity is all I really want.
Hugh Dancy
#5. The basic skill of an actor is, in fact, empathy, and that's maybe not a skill, it's a disposition. I am an assistant storyteller. I enjoy feeling useful to a team effort. It's my way of finding a use for myself, a utility in this world.
Harrison Ford
#6. I'd like to be wanted for my body, too! As an actor I want to play all different kinds of women - independent women but also very vulnerable women.
Rachel Weisz
#7. I stay healthy - I mean, I've got a sports background and an athletic background. I was in competitive sports since the age of five. I was a personal trainer before I was an actor and a personal trainer for the first few years while I was acting and getting my thesis.
Neil Jackson
#8. I was an accidental actor. I was never formally trained.
David Soul
#9. I had spent my entire career not wanting to talk about weight, not wanting to deal with it, wanting to be an actor first.
Sara Rue
#10. The only thing I wanted to do when I was a young naive kid was to become a New York stage actor.
Oliver Platt
#11. Every job I've had since 'Smallville' has wanted me to have red hair, so I have to thank 'Smallville' for that. But, just the fact that it was so different was appealing to me. As an actor, you want to be able to play a lot of different things.
Cassidy Freeman
#12. From 1980 to 1990, I shot more films than any other actor in the Screen Actors Guild, apart from Gene Hackman.
Steve Guttenberg
#13. You know Marques Houston, you know I'm a dancer, I'm a singer, but I wouldn't want to do a movie that I'm a dancer and a singer in. I want to do movies that people can take me more seriously in as an actor, because when you're making that transition, it is tough.
Marques Houston
#14. If you are a successful actor, which is what I am, then you tend to get labelled very quickly and easily.
Kristin Scott Thomas
#15. That's an actor's dream to get something meaty and juicy and challenging to work on.
Rutina Wesley
#16. Being in 'Coronation Street' is only going to make me a better actor.
Rob James-Collier
#17. There's a lot of actors out there or people who want to be actors. It's unique to find somebody that, you know, needs to be an actor.
Jeremy Sisto
#18. The fact that the human act is self-directed or built up means in no sense that the actor necessarily exercises excellence in its construction. Indeed, he may do a very poor job in constructing his act.
Herbert Blumer
#19. If you really do want to be an actor who can satisfy himself and his audience, you need to be vulnerable. You must reach the emotional and intellectual level of ability where you can go out stark naked, emotionally, in front of an audience.
Jack Lemmon
#20. I don't see myself only as a Somali character. I think of myself as an actor, and if the job fits me and I like the story, I will go for it.
Barkhad Abdi
#21. Every actor has their stalker.
Erin Gray
#23. I always think that I'm the best thing in a lot of bad movies. Personally, I have to. I think that I like me as an actor.
Matthew Lillard
#24. I don't have any blindness when it comes to my money. As an actor, you can get distracted by your work. I do keep an eye on my nest egg, if you will.
Judd Nelson
#25. The average actor might only be able to book six to eight guest star jobs a year - that would be high. So when you start doing the math, you can't live on that in Los Angeles.
Beth Broderick
#27. I would love nothing more to participate in a real struggle to find a character, and really delve into and develop a character. That's why I'm an actor.
Amber Heard
#28. When I shoot actors, I have that dilemma. I want the actor to be good, and sometimes I have to push them to a place that isn't pleasant. I always think: 'Is it worth doing for the sake of the movie?' But I have to remember the bigger picture.
Michel Gondry
#29. Movie-making is serious business. The director and the crew are already under a lot of pressure to give their best to the audience. Therefore, the best part for me as an actor is to act well in the movies and make a jolly atmosphere with the co-stars on the sets.
Abhishek Bachchan
#30. I think it's every actor's dream to play a character that's really odd, and you know no one wants to play himself.
Sam Claflin
#31. I've made a career over the last seventeen years of mostly playing men in uniform, especially cops. The one thing for an actor that is death, is if you're bored. The boredom will show in your work.
Benjamin Bratt
#32. I honestly think I'm just an actor. It doesn't matter the medium. I can go on stage and be happy, I can be on TV and be happy.
Michael Ealy
#33. As an actor, your text is your bible, so you're not making a documentary, but you still have to follow the choices made by your writer.
Natalie Dormer
#34. The best visual effects are when you shoot as much of what you can in camera. And it's really good for the actor's performance to have something real.
Rob Letterman
#35. Paul Newman is simple not an actor and possibly not even alive.
Dwight Macdonald
#36. I had known that I'd wanted to be an actor from a very early age, but I had always known that I wanted to have a dual career. I wanted to be an actor, and I also at that time wanted to be a rock star.
Billy Burke
#37. I'm a people's actor, not a critics' actor, and I always have been.
Chuck Norris
#38. There's something important, as an actor, about allowing yourself to be approached by people to do roles. People see different things in you.
Damian Lewis
#39. On 'Old School,' I was not an actor, I was Snoop Dogg, so I came to the set with a whole different vibe, and a different crew of people. And on 'Starsky and Hutch,' I was more of an actor. I wasn't Snoop Dogg, the rapper.
Snoop Dogg
#40. The chance to play a character with a split personality is an actor's dream.
Ashley Bell
#41. Becoming an actor is like becoming a father. It's not hard to become one. Making a life of it is the challenge.
Christoph Waltz
#42. I played soccer, and I played in a band, and sometimes I was able to do a movie. And my school would cooperate. It was a very easy way to roll into what later became my profession. It's more innocent. When you're a child actor in the U.S., it's a different thing I think.
Michiel Huisman
#43. I didn't think I was an actor and fought it for a long time. Nobody paid for that but me.
Kathleen Quinlan
#44. I don't think any actor wants their children to follow them into the profession.
Helena Bonham Carter
#45. You know to me, being a good actor, the most important quality is you've got to love to play, and to just be open to anything.
Peter Berg
#46. Being an actor in L.A. is like being in prison: you go, you serve your time, you try to replicate Johnny Depp's career - and then you move to Paris.
Alex Pettyfer
#47. Every once in a while in an actor's life, a cast comes together.
Joyce DeWitt
#48. I'm more than an actor. I'm an icon, an industry.
Corey Feldman
#49. I don't pretend to be anything but an actor and a writer.
Dan Futterman
#50. There is a need for aloneness, which I don't think most people realise for an actor. It's almost having certain kinds of secrets for yourself that you'll let the whole world in on only for a moment, when you're acting. But everybody is always tugging at you. They'd all like sort of a chunk of you.
Marilyn Monroe
#51. I don't have any expectations as an actor, and being rich and famous is not my driving force.
James D'arcy
#52. There's no rule that you have to like Henry Rollins the musician or the actor.
Henry Rollins
#53. My hunger and desperation, being an actor, an out of work actor - my memory of that is as fresh as an open wound.
Griffin Dunne
#54. I think actors are divided into two groups: one that wants to be an actor to become famous and rich, and the other that wants to be an actor because they have to be. I'm more in the second group.
Franka Potente
#55. I think any good actor is an anarchist. They have to be.
Sam Rockwell
#56. As an actor, you want to push yourself.
Sarah Baker
#57. If I do a scene with an actor who doesn't have much experience, I say, 'I tell you what we're going to do: You just listen to me, and then you respond. We don't have to do any acting.' And that's good advice because you shouldn't see the acting.
Jon Voight
#58. Like the actor, authority has faith in its false whiskers. But its deepest faith is in the human illusion. People will hang on to illusion as eagerly as life itself.
Ben Hecht
#59. Shammiji is said to be India's answer to Elvis Presley, but I say that Elvis Presley is America's answer to Shammi Kapoor. The mark of a good actor is the belief with which he gives a shot and Shammiji gave his each shot with a strong belief and that makes him a great actor of all times.
Aamir Khan
#60. People sometimes have to be reminded, I'm not Frank Underwood. I'm an actor named Kevin Spacey.
Kevin Spacey
#62. Politicians were famous for double-speak and were consummate liars. That's why George W. Bush had to be their favorite president. It's easier to commit a fraud when the actor believes his lie to the point of a conviction
Kenneth Eade
#63. You have to make sure that you find projects that are not too similar and roles that are not too similar, so the challenges are new and you still learn things. I still think I can become a much better actor.
Stellan Skarsgard
#64. The worst thing for an actor is to be stuck in one kind of thing. But if you're not in people's faces all the time, you can lose traction. And that affects the choice of things you get offered.
Joanne Whalley
#65. A good director creates an environment, which gives the actor the encouragement to fly.
Kevin Bacon
#66. When I look in the mirror, I see the ageing process at full pelt, the hairline in retreat, the bags under the eyes growing and darkening, that kind of thing. I suppose it would be easier if I weren't an actor, but I am fairly philosophical about it.
Robert Webb
#67. I was doing progressively smaller movies in England, after Harry Potter ... to the point where I was doing nine-day shoots for, like, 20p and a packet of Space Invaders. And then this happened. So I'm not just another actor who's around and jobbing. When you hire me for a job, you're hiring.
Robert Pattinson
#68. When a performance isn't working, it's usually because the actor is trying to do something and they're not able to express their idea very well. It's a muddled expression.
Casey Affleck
#69. As an actor, I think most people have a tendency to want to demonstrate that they can act, they can emote.
James Norton
#70. In comedy, you have to do all of the same stuff you do in drama and then put the comedy on top of it. You, the actor, are aware of the comedy but the character is oblivious. And you have to have a sense of humor.
Jon Lovitz
#71. You'd be hard-pressed to find an actor who isn't a sex symbol somewhere.
Jamie Dornan
#72. I believe singing should be like being an actor. People shouldn't have any problem buying an actor being in a comedy or a drama or a horror film. That should be the same way with music.
Darren Criss
#73. I just like watching people who really are not self-conscious, who aren't aware, because I fear that one could become too self-conscious, too artful, as an actor. Sometimes if you look at somebody, you can extrapolate from their exterior what might be happening in their interior. I'm nosy.
Harriet Walter
#74. You want to be on your toes; You don't want to be in a Nic Cage movie and just have him blow by you as an actor.
Harold Perrineau
#75. I like films to be pure cinema, but I also like them to provide a snapshot of a family, a society or a character - something that can nourish you as a human being as well as an actor.
Tahar Rahim
#76. Everybody always feels that they're right even if they're wrong and that's what a whole actor's career is built around rationalizing your way into whatever character you're playing.
Clint Eastwood
#77. As an actor, I have casting issues. I'm a minority. I don't have trouble making a living, but as far as being on the food chain of the pecking order of actors, I'm not at the top of it. With the jobs that I do, there are always control issues with directors and producers.
BD Wong
#78. I always think it's hard for any young actor to make that transition to more grown-up roles. Because you don't want to alienate your audience who has been supportive of you for so many years, so you kind of have to tiptoe through that process.
Alexa Vega
#79. When you're an actor you don't really know what you have to do until you see what you look like.
Tom Wilkinson
#80. Actors live dependent on being validated by other people's opinions. I don't understand what it is I do that people want. I don't know what an actor does. I have no credentials. I don't know what I'm doing.
Shia Labeouf
#81. My favorite actor is - I can't believe I'm saying this - is Meagan Good. I've met her in person.
Quvenzhane Wallis
#82. But then there is the one who seems to have a hard time separating the actor's work from reality.
Audrey Meadows
#83. I can now shed the child-actor thing, like the fat, and start a new career, because no one sees me as Dudley.
Harry Melling
#84. Some like to start from the inside and then go to the outside. I'm the other type of actor. First, I have to know how my character looks, how he walks, how he drives, how he eats.
Patrick Huard
#85. You see, my version of why anyone would want to become an actor is that it's some psychological fixation, something that happened in puberty that you didn't outgrow in time, which is normal. Nevertheless, if you make it a profession, it can be really neurotic.
Christoph Waltz
#86. There are some actor secrets you keep sometimes, and you want to keep.
Kevin Bacon
#87. Maybe this is my morality coming in again but it was important to me that the actor [ in Notes On A Scandal] was above the age of consent. Although really, what's the difference between 15 and 16? It's the law, yeah, but he's very mature.
Cate Blanchett
#88. I really, specifically, love acting, and I think it's a really cool thing to be really indulgent and follow that. I have a lot of ambitions in life, but for the next few years, I just want to be an actor. That's a lucky opportunity, and that drives me to want to be good at that.
Kristen Stewart
#89. I think that there's not much point to being an actor if you're not enjoying it, so I try to be picky about roles I do like to go out for.
Grey Damon
#90. I love theater. I go all the time. It's one of the reasons I moved to New York. But I understand that I have limited range as an actor. I can only play people who talk like me.
Steve Earle
#91. Actors are just entertainers, even the serious ones. That's all an actor is. He's like a serious Bruce Forsyth.
Bob Hoskins
#92. I see myself as a character actor, and I've always been drawn to playing characters that are different from myself because acting is escapism for me. I've never been that comfortable playing people that are like me.
Alessandro Nivola
#93. By the time I hit college, my secret shame was the reason I was an actor was my own words sort of dried up. I stopped writing. I stopped being able to form my own vision. That's actually what my first feature is about - looking back at two different selves.
Lynn Shelton
#94. I decided to become an actor because I was failing in school and I needed the credits.
Dustin Hoffman
#95. Ewan McGregor stars as Jedi Obi-Wan Kenobi, again doing a fine Alec Guinness impersonation but otherwise seeming lost and alone in the galaxy as the one actor attempting to give a real performance in this mess.
Stephanie Zacharek
#96. The Hollywood model is to develop scripts for 10 years, sell them, transfer them, attach this actor, then attach a director. This isn't what I'm about. I'm much more of a creator and a doer.
Mike Birbiglia
#97. I'm not partial to any system, but at the same time, I'm a Korean actor, so I expect to work mainly on Korean projects.
Bae Doona
#98. Marlon once said to me about being an actor: Can you imagine going to work every day and pretending to be someone else?
Mike Medavoy
#99. In other words, I wouldn't like to be an actor if I could only be real. I like to get wild, behaviorally wild, and it's crazy to think of any form where it's just one way.
Jack Nicholson
#100. As an actor, you want as much variety as you can muster up. Otherwise you just keep playing the same chord over and over again.
Michelle Forbes
