An Actor Quotes

#1. I really want my career to be as an actor-writer-director-producer, you know? I don't know what will be stronger than the other.

Danny Strong

#2. And there I suddenly found my articulate self in a dazzling land of smiling, jostling people wearing and not wearing all sorts of costumes and doing all sorts of clever things. And that's when I knew! What other life could there be but that of an actor?

Cary Grant

#3. Most actors don't really have a director's sensibility. They have an actor's sensibility.

Jodie Foster

#4. If I wasn't an actor? Hmm, I'd probably be a serial killer. I'm just so damn likeable, no one would ever suspect me.

Zach Braff

#5. The goal is always just trying to stretch yourself as an actor.

Andrew Scott

#6. As an actor myself, the opportunity to sing and dance and be dramatic and be funny - it's really irresistible to actors. You get to show all sides of your talent.

Elizabeth Banks

#7. I'm just an actor, but if the extra part of it is that I'm helping people or people are being helped by the virtue of what we're doing, then that's just a really nice added extra.

Christopher Meloni

#8. Performing on stage is my first love - it's why I wanted to be an actor in the first place - and 'Arcadia' is the highlight of my career so far. I love the intimacy of a live theatre audience - you can really squeeze every last drop out of each scene.

Tom Riley

#9. London as an actor, writer, and part owner of the playing company the

William Shakespeare

#10. Sometimes I don't feel like an actor. Sometimes I speak about it like it was another job, and then I go, 'Wait a minute - I am one!'

Michael Keaton

#11. My main goal, starting out as a young actor, was to carry the reins that Pac left off and to reach the depths as an actor that I know he would have reached had he still been here with us.

Michael K. Williams

#12. It makes it fun. When an actor plays a character, you want what that character wants. Otherwise it doesn't look authentic. So I really want to defeat Jimmy - I mean Jimmy as the character.

Alan Alda

#13. I mean, I always think when you're an actor you have to be the guy running into the burning building rather than running out of it, if you want to make some noise as an actor.

Dylan McDermott

#14. One of the fun things about being an actor is stepping outside yourself and outside of your own experience. It's challenging yourself to totally commit to something that in your core is so wrong.

Jason Priestley

#15. The most intoxicating thing about being an actor is to surrender to a story that you never would have come up with.

Brit Marling

#16. I grew up in a family of actors. I grew up onstage. The choice for me wasn't, 'Do I want to be an actor or not?' I always felt like that's just ingrained in you, the need to perform. The choice was, 'Do you want to do this professionally or not?'

James Badge Dale

#17. It's nice to establish yourself as an actor first and a singer second. Proof is such a tremendous piece of work, and I'm incredibly lucky to be a part of it. I'm sure that the musicals will happen in the future, though.

Neil Patrick Harris

#18. I didn't think of myself as a singer. I'm an actor who recites words, and sometimes that happens to be on musical notes.

Mandy Patinkin

#19. I think of being an actor as a blue-collar profession.

Joe Mantegna

#20. I am still seeking to become firmly established as an actor.

DeForest Kelley

#21. If I had a long-term partner, I don't think I'd be an actor. It'd be too much of a strain; you have to work too hard to balance that life with a family and a mortgage and all that stuff - it would be too much.

Rory McCann

#22. I like the Baldwin boys a great deal. Alec is super-smart, super-articulate, almost too smart to be an actor.

Anthony LaPaglia

#23. I wasn't aware of my dad being an actor when I was young. I remember there was an Australian children's entertainer on television called Ralph Harris and when I'd say my father was an actor, kids would say, you know, 'oh, is he Ralph Harris?' And I had to say no and then they would lose interest.

Jared Harris

#24. I have been very lucky for most of my adult life to be working as an actor.

Josh Hopkins

#25. One of the greatest things I've learned, as an actor, was how to talk to actors.

Eric Balfour

#26. There are the jobs you get that do something for your confidence, like "I can do this with my life" kind of thing. And then, there are the jobs that maybe bring a certain level of awareness about you as an actor where other people feel like they can hire you.

Rosemarie DeWitt

#27. Before an actor can be this or be that, the actor must simply be.

Zoe Saldana

#28. Being on a Paul Thomas Anderson film, the best decision an actor can make is to listen to Paul Thomas Anderson. Because he's probably not going to steer anyone in the wrong direction. I would always say go with your gut on any other movie set, but with Paul, I would say go with Paul's gut.

Rami Malek

#29. Like an actor who transforms into the character that they're playing, you can transform into yourself.

Leeza Gibbons

#30. My advice has always been to study the craft of acting if you want to be an actor. There are many great schools that teach acting. NYU being one of them.

Peter Facinelli

#31. My mom says that when I was a little kid, I always used to say I wanted to be an actor, but I don't remember that.

Aaron Douglas

#32. As an actor, it's fun to play guys who aren't just locked into a male pattern, but a lot of guys you're asked to play are fairly macho and have a certain rigid standard they're living by.

Fred Ward

#33. Each director is different. Clint Eastwood and Chris Nolan are completely different, and I need to adjust to the story and character and the director and just my duty as an actor.

Ken Watanabe

#34. It wasn't as though I really made a commitment to it; there wasn't anything else around. So I wasn't driven to become an actor.. it just seemed to be the thing that I managed to do best.

Paul Newman

#35. As an actor, I really like Philip Seymour Hoffman. I think he's a genius.

Simon Cowell

#36. You need to be as clean of a slate as you can be, as an actor. You have to try to be open to every experience.

Cillian Murphy

#37. As an actor I'm always interested in dialogue, the way the characters speak to each other. I also enjoy a bit of humor, especially when it's unexpected.

Michael Boatman

#38. I prefer stage work, as an actor.

Robert Sean Leonard

#39. You know, it's recently come into focus for me why I want to be an actor: It's because of the connection I feel to people.

Jessica Chastain

#40. I'm an actor, I do movies, and I need to find somebody who enjoys that kind of stuff. It's not like, "Oh, I have my work time, and we go on a date, and it better be darn fun and exciting!" I think it should all coalesce a bit more.

James Franco

#41. You see, in America, it's quite standard for an actor to sign, at the beginning of a series, for five or seven years. The maximum any British agent will allow you to have over an actor is three years.

Julian Fellowes

#42. 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

#43. When you first start out as an actor, you're just looking for a good part. As time goes on, if you're being held responsible for the movies themselves, you're looking for a good script all around.

George Clooney

#44. There are short parts that I as an actor am very right for. Or I just like the part. Or you need someone like me for the movie. By that I don't mean at the box office, I mean in the execution of the material.

Jack Nicholson

#45. 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

#46. There are many ups and downs in everyone's life and when you're an actor usually you're a very sensitive human being.

Melanie Griffith

#47. 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

#48. Any good production team is going to allow an actor to breathe life into the characters - that's why they hired that woman, that man, whatever the case.

John DiMaggio

#49. An actor's life is the shadow of a cloud, the echo of a sound, the memory of a dream, nothing come of nothing. The finest actor does not create, he is but a translator of another man's work.

Fanny Kemble

#50. I think I'm fortunate as an actor in that I do seem to get opportunities to play roles that aren't necessarily typical of what I've done before.

Martin Henderson

#51. The secret to longevity in the music business is to change, and to be able to change. An actor has to assume other people's identities. A rock star doesn't need to do that. But change is important.

Nick Cave

#52. An actor has no more right to be temperamental than a bank clerk.

Fredric March

#53. An actor's career doesn't feel like just one career to me. It feels like about five or six. Because every six or seven years, you look in the mirror and you have a completely different product.

Ron Livingston

#54. I always knew that I wanted to work and I knew I wanted to be a singer and an actor. I knew that every choice I made would help me get to that point. So the better the choices I made, the more of a chance I would have to get to where I wanted to be.

Lea Michele

#55. The first movie I really clicked with was 'Die Hard' when I was 6 years old, which is crazy that I was watching it that young. That was the one that made me want to become an actor.

Jack Reynor

#56. I didn't apply to any colleges - I lied to all my friends and told them I was going to UCSD, because all their parents would be like, 'Mark, where're you going to college?' and I'd just lie 'cause I felt it was unrealistic to be an actor.

Mark Ruffalo

#57. The life of an actor is very hard irrespective of the continent you are in. It is doubly hard when you are only eligible for minority roles.

Kabir Bedi

#58. It would be far to general a statement to try and describe the daily life of an actor in Hollywood, but I am quite certain that cappucinos have something to do with it.

Corin Nemec

#59. As an actor, the only thing we can do is play the truth at that moment. Because at any point in time if you play the future, or you play that you know something that the audience does not know, it kills the illusion of reality.

Anthony Mackie

#60. I'm an actor, and I like having attention, I guess. There's a reason I like being on stage. There's a reason I like being in front of a camera. It's that interaction.

Tatiana Maslany

#61. Sometimes you take a job for the money, sometimes you take it for the location, sometimes you take it for the script; there are just a number of reasons, and ultimately what you see is the whole landscape of it. But I can tell you from behind the scenes - that's what it is, as an actor.

Viola Davis

#62. I think the greatest thing about being an actor is that you can become other people ... You have the opportunity to explore ... alternative ways of living for a brief time.

Ian McDiarmid

#63. I love to read scripts. But I am very happy right now to say that I am a working actor. In this town of Los Angeles, the phrase 'I'm an actor' is overrated. So, I like to say, 'I'm a working actor.'

Jaime Camil

#64. I didn't know what the path was that I wanted to be as an actor, to be honest. I've been doing a lot of theater since I was a kid, so I was just sort of taking opportunities.

Guy Pearce

#65. I don't socialize. I'm kind of a hermit. The life of an actor can be very lonely.

Peter Dinklage

#66. I've played some gangster roles, but that's obviously not me. When you're an Italian-American New York actor, it's just an easy way to get cast.

Michael Imperioli

#67. My strongest quality as an actor is taking direction. I will give my performance as a template and if the director gives any instruction, I take that information, process it and morph it into the next take. I love the feeling I get when nailing a scene through direction.

James Preston Rogers

#68. We ask actors to come to work ready to open a vein, to be emotionally thin-skinned. If someone screams, 'What about my coffee?' it's not about the coffee; it's because they're working in an emotional state. It ain't easy being an actor.

Don Scardino

#69. As an actor, there's a bit of you that's decided you want to be looked at and watched, but there's a paradoxical bit that wants to run away.

Ralph Fiennes

#70. Part of being an actor is almost self-hypnosis during those brief moments when the cameras are rolling. You want to actually believe you're Chris Gardner or Muhammad Ali.

Will Smith

#71. I have no illusions about my position in this world as an actor or anything like that. I'm very realistic. Reality is a very liberating thing.

Anthony Hopkins

#72. I'm not so in a rush to direct just anything because I'm lucky that I can make a living so far as an actor and not have to worry about that as a director. And so I can be a little more choosy in things I direct.

Steve Buscemi

#73. I always wanted to be normal. I tried really hard, but it's like I try so hard and then people still say I'm offbeat. I've learnt to accept that and take advantage of it as an actor.

Zooey Deschanel

#74. I think when someone becomes an actor, people say, Aw, you could see it in him when he was little. But I think you can see that quality in every little kid.

Skeet Ulrich

#75. Everybody who is an actor has been acting since they were three.

Mia Wasikowska

#76. My job as an actor is to cover and expose in varying allowance that - so that the audience can peek through the window to the people I create.

Lorraine Toussaint

#77. Being an actor somehow can be a perverse extension of that feeling we generally all have as children, that feeling of wanting to please. Of course you're looking for affirmation, encouragement.

Gina McKee

#78. It wasn't like I ever said, 'I want to be an actor.' I was in the right place at the right time. I went to a local drama group because I found football on the weekends too cold - which is highly ironic because I've had some of the coldest experiences of my life filming 'Game of Thrones.'

Isaac Hempstead-Wright

#79. I think that's who you should be servicing as an actor is the fans. You don't wanna alienate new people from coming in, but you gotta first and foremost service your fans.

Krysten Ritter

#80. As an actor, you're sort of the court-appointed lawyer for the character.

Vera Farmiga

#81. 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

#82. The world seems concerned with Pakistan primarily as an actor in global attempts to combat terrorism.

Mohsin Hamid

#83. One of my first jobs ever as an actor was working with Julie White on a sitcom called 'Grace Under Fire.'

Tom Everett Scott

#84. I think meeting someone like, meeting Sam Shepard, that was someone who was kind of important for me, because I'd read so much of his work and watched him as an actor since I was a kid, then being on set doing a scene with him and thinking, 'This is really surreal.'

Richard Madden

#85. As an actor, what you dream of is being able to portray people that people empathize with and understand and really feel for.

Daniel Sharman

#86. As an actor, that's the most important thing. You want to be able to let go and not hold onto anything, so that you can give an honest portrayal and performance.

James Wolk

#87. Whenever I've been asked to be in a film, directors only want me to play myself ... I'm fascinated by the thought of being an actor, but it's too hard. And I think Shakespeare-which has been suggested to me-might be a bit of a stretch.

Tom Jones

#88. I think it's important for me as an actor that I say these are the issues I'm going to be committed to. One of them for me is women and children's health around the world and their rights;the other is ovarian cancer.

Nicole Kidman

#89. I was like, what the hell is my life coming to? I'm a trained actor! I've done Shakespeare and here I am having farting contests with an imaginary dog!

Matthew Lillard

#90. I think I'm a better collaborator, in seeing the bigger picture and trying to just help that, and not be so self-centered in whatever my task is, which is being an actor.

Ray McKinnon

#91. It is better to be making the news than taking it, to be an actor rather than a critic.

Winston Churchill

#92. I think of Ray Harryhausen's work - I knew his name before I knew any actor or director's names. His films had an impact on me very early on, probably even more than Disney. I think that's what made me interested in animation: His work.

Tim Burton

#93. One of my favorite things in watching an actor is feeling, The story is safe in your hands. I can lean back and trust you with this.

Alison Pill

#94. My film school is making movies. But, I do think that being an actor has served me immensely, as both a writer and director, in terms of knowing what is playable and what will be fun to play, for actors, and also how to communicate to actors on set, and not screw them up and get them in their head.

Josh Radnor

#95. I have to start with elements of myself, which is what you always do as an actor.

Kate Baldwin

#96. The thing as an actor is you get a sense of what a show is like the minute you walk on the set.

David Morrissey

#97. I'm super grateful to be an employed actor.

Mayim Bialik

#98. I don't want to just be an actor my whole life. I mean I do want to be an actor my whole life but not only an actor, I want to be an artist.

Ansel Elgort

#99. Although just being employed as an actor is a big thing, I'm not sure I'd be satisfied playing the same character for 30 years; it's not why I want to do this for a living.

Jamie Dornan

#100. You know, I was a huge fan of comedy and movies and TV growing up, and I was able to memorize and mimic a lot of things, not realizing that that meant I probably wanted to be an actor.

Hank Azaria