Bad Acting Quotes

#1. I think sometimes soap acting gets an unfair label for being bad and over the top. The lessons I learned there were so valuable. Seeing yourself every day on television, you learned what worked and didn't work, what was bad acting and what wasn't. Memorizing scripts became second nature.

Dylan Bruce

#2. Don't stink up the place with bad acting, if an opportunity comes your way.

Edie McClurg

#3. I can't say that I haven't done some bad acting in my time. I have. Usually that involves what we actors call 'indicating,' when you twirl your mustache.

Billy Campbell

#4. Bad acting is the ultimate inconsideration.

Debra Winger

#5. The art of acting is not to act. Once you show them more, what you show them, in fact is bad acting.

Anthony Hopkins

#6. Faked enthusiasm is worse than bad acting - it is bad acting with the intent to deceive.

Bo Bennett

#7. is not good for one's morals to see bad acting. Besides,

Oscar Wilde

#8. I don't think the concept of "directing actors" exists in the sense that if you get what you order from an actor you'll always get bad acting. Every actor is scared just like a regular person.

Pirjo Honkasalo

#9. Most actors want the audience to like them, and that leads to bad acting.

Lee Daniels

#10. It is not good for one's morals to see bad acting

Oscar Wilde

#11. Believe me, when an actress is told that her very name is synonymous with bad acting, she's had it.

Piper Laurie

#12. I have an appreciation for what some people would call "bad acting," but which I think can be much more real than the overly emotive, technical and supposedly "realistic" acting that is so prevalent in mainstream cinema.

Bruce LaBruce

#13. Just because we're on schedule is no reason to shoot bad acting. Someone once said to me, 'You're inconsiderate.' And I said, 'Inconsiderate? Bad acting is the ultimate inconsideration.' It's a collective slap to a million faces at the same time.

Debra Winger

#14. I started my career giving a clinic in bad acting in the film, "The Silver Chalice," and now I'm playing a crusty old man who's an animated automobile [in "Cars"]. That's a creative arc for you, isn't it?

Paul Newman

#15. No one will die because of bad acting. No one will die because you missed a cue. We're all human beings. If mistakes are made, you figure out that you're going to live.

Kate Baldwin

#16. In a movie, you need good actors, whereas in a book, you don't, unless you have a really bad imagination. In a book, your imagination will do the acting for you. Also, the process of revelation is often different. Tension is achieved in a different way.

Yann Martel

#17. I mean one of the basic rules when you're acting is that you mustn't stand in judgement on a character, you mustn't say Hitler was a bad man because you can't act in that way.

Janet Suzman

#18. It's much harder to act in a bad film than in a good one. A terrible script makes for very difficult acting. You can win an Academy Award for some of the easiest acting in your career, made possible by a brilliant script.

Michael Caine

#19. Acting is playing pretend, playing a children's game at an adult level, but with children's rules. It's fun to play bad guys. I've never been in a fight in my life, so it's fun to play something that's different.

Ray Liotta

#20. Politicians are usually the first to forget that if you assume someone else is acting in bad faith, they will do the same to you. Questioning motives poisons the well.

John Sununu

#21. The big turning point came when I played in the pit orchestra for a production of SWEENEY TODD and I spent most of the time watching the play instead of playing the score! And that's when I knew I had it bad for acting.

John Cariani

#22. The U.S.-led western alliance, while acting as an advocate of democracy, rule of law and human rights, is acting from the opposite position, rejecting the democratic principle of the sovereign right of states enshrined in the U.N. Charter and trying to decide for others what is good and what is bad.

Sergei Lavrov

#23. You left me, ripped out my heart, and then came back acting like a robot, and you know what? We made it through. You and I, good or bad, belong together. We make each other whole.

Jessica Sorensen

#24. Mothers seem to have an infinite capacity to withstand hurt from their children. All they see is their pain and I think they feel responsible for it, as if it is their fault that the child in question is feeling so bad and acting so selfishly -- and thus the very least they can do is take it.

Belinda Jones

#25. It's bad writing, however naturalistic it's written, that's where you have to do your best acting.

Adam Brody

#26. I was a bad student. I liked archaeology actually, I was interested in maybe becoming an archaeologist but I was such a bad student and had such bad grades that I wasn't going to get into any really good college so I fell back on acting.

Ben Stiller

#27. I miss Texas so bad. That's the hard part about being out here in L.A., trying to pursue acting and music and lighting and production and stuff. It takes a lot of time out from your personal life, and I can only get back to Texas three times a year at most. It's tough.

Jackson Rathbone

#28. We had generals who were admirals and admirals who wanted to be generals. Generals acting as admirals are bad enough, but it was the admirals who wanted to be generals who imperiled victory among the coral islands.

Holland Smith

#29. Strangely, when I was a kid, my first acting job, at 5 years old, was a performance of 'The Three Little Pigs.' They cast me as the Big Bad Wolf.

William Zabka

#30. Acting is everything to me and it's at the core of every decision. Whatever importance costumes, details, lights, camera, dialogue and everything else have, if the acting is bad, cheap, or overdone everything else is just gone.

Xavier Dolan

#31. You don't call retarded people retards. It's bad taste. You call your friends retards when they are acting retarded.

Michael Scott

#32. Acting for me is not a bad habit like smoking that I must make an effort to quit. I love acting; I love directing.

Joan Chen

#33. My dad said that if it's part of the character, I'm allowed to say bad words, but if it's not part of the character, and I say it at home when I'm not acting, that I won't be acting anymore.

Rohan Chand

#34. With the best intentions, the job of acting can become a display of accumulated bad habits, trapped instincts and blocked energies. Working with the Alexander Technique has given me sightings of another way ... Mind and body, work and life together. Real imaginative freedom ...

Alan Rickman

#35. A person who is good for anything ought not to calculate the chance of living or dying; he or she ought only to consider whether in doing anything he or she is doing right or wrong- acting the part of a good person or a bad person.

Plato

#36. I definitely support cop acting more than cops, but all of them ain't bad, just some of them.

Ice Cube

#37. Quit acting like everything is so serious. Most situations aren't as bad as you fear, and those that are might benefit from a little laughter.

Richelle E. Goodrich

#38. When you do a four-camera sitcom, everything is a little schtickier. It's not necessarily that you pick up bad habits, but there is just a very specific way of acting that you fall into on those kinds of multicamera shows, and you have to break those habits when you go in to do other things.

Mila Kunis

#39. I went to Catholic school, and there was this teacher, a Brother, who saw I could go either way, good or bad. He took an interest in me and got me to do a play. I got hooked on acting, and it gave me something constructive to do. I had a lot of energy.

William Forsythe

#40. Now that I'm more mature, in a funny way, I can even appreciate that I've bad to become more aware of my body. Since I've chosen acting as my career, I have to keep my weight down anyway-I've been used to it for years, so it's no problem. And there's nothing I can't do.

Dana Hill

#41. For me, I need to be able to show up on set and fart around and goof around. If I can have that, when I'm not acting, then when I'm acting I can go however deep and dark and bad I need to. I developed that more with 'Breaking Bad' because I've never worked on anything as dark for as long.

Betsy Brandt

#42. Feminism was supposed to chase away all of those embarrassing vulnerabilities. At least, you were supposed to be aware that acting helpless was something shameful. So was the tendency to hide your own fear behind the toughness of bad boys, if you had that. I had that. I'm being honest here. The

Deb Caletti

#43. Acting never was about the money for me ... Maybe in 10 years, I'll be able to appreciate the fact that I am financially stable and independent and I don't have to make bad choices. I can be very picky.

Emma Watson

#44. I'm a theater actress and I thrive on working with other actors, and you can't be even a smidge bad, when you're acting with Charlie [Sheen]. He's just so natural, so present and so good that you have to step up to his level, or else.

Daniela Bobadilla

#45. If you make a mistake, admit it. Any attempt at cover-up will ultimately backfire. At some level the patient will sense you are acting in bad faith, and therapy will suffer. Furthermore, an open admission of error is good model-setting for patients and another sign that they matter to you.

Irvin D. Yalom

#46. Acting is like sex, it's possible if your partner is bad, but it's better if they're good.

Xavier Samuel

#47. When I used to wrestle professionally, I preferred being the bad guy known as 'The Heel;' you would get to 'work the crowd,' getting them to hate you and want to see you lose, while the good guy 'Babyface' would walk in, smile and shake hands with a few kids, and his acting job was done.

Conan Stevens

#48. Acting like everyone who's been successful is bad and because you're rich you're bad, I don't understand it,

Jamie Dimon

#49. Idleness does drive me crazy, but I'd rather read or write than do anything just to work. A kind of respect has been instilled in me for acting: I love it too much to ever have a bad relationship with it.

Karen Allen

#50. I started acting when I was about nine. I always wanted to get into acting since I was really little but my parents would never let me because they'd heard all the bad stuff about being in the business as a young actor and stuff like that.

Josh Hutcherson

#51. Present injustices exist not so much because simple individuals are acting in bad faith or lacking in charity, but because huge, impersonal systems (that seem beyond the control of the individuals acting within them) disprivilege some even as they unduly privilege others.

Ronald Rolheiser

#52. I knew that I wanted to be an actor. Then it became about whether acting wanted me. So, I gave it a shot. It hasn't worked out too bad, so far.

Laura San Giacomo

#53. I wanted to find my limitations so I decided to do Shylock. And if I fail? I've never been afraid of that. I have other fears - doing bad work knowingly is the worst fear.

Dustin Hoffman

#54. I guess once you've been acting for a long time, you glean the great bits of good directors and the bad bits from other directors, and you know the way that you would like to be directed.

Luke Evans

#55. All I have to do is be me on stage. But acting, I have to be someone else, and walk how they would walk and blink how they would blink. I used to talk about it bad like, 'Aw man, that person made $10 million a movie?' But now I understand why they do. I get it now.

Jill Scott

#56. Sometimes acting and politics make a very bad combination. I think that sometimes people take me less seriously in my work for the UN because I am an actor.

Angelina Jolie

#57. I want to do it all. I want to climb mountains, go through jungles, fight wars in space, get the girl, shoot the bad-guy full of lead, have all the zippy one liners, bulge muscles out of a singlet, drip sweat and blood on screen, all of that.

Benedict Cumberbatch

#58. My dad always said he wanted to be remembered for his body of work, and he's made more than 75 pictures, some good, some bad, and they will be his legacy to the world of acting.

Charlton Heston

#59. The biggest mistake in student films is that they are usually cast so badly, with friends and people the directors know. Actually you can cover a lot of bad direction with good acting.

Brian De Palma

#60. Acting is all about being truthful. I'm really bad at lying. I'm one of the worst liars I know.

Dane DeHaan

#61. A good change leader never thinks, "Why are these people acting so badly? They must be bad people." A change leader thinks, "How can I set up a situation that brings out the good in these people?

Chip Heath

#62. Yes, I did try acting when I was in high school and I was terrible at it. So I definitely have had the experience of being bad at artistic endeavor.

Dana Spiotta

#63. Personally I don't believe in bad people. I think there's always a reason for people acting badly.

Bill Skarsgard

#64. You two have a bad habit of acting like fools and calling it heroic.

Leigh Bardugo

#65. What's wrong with lust? You fancy your neighbor's husband so what are you supposed to do? Poke your eyes out so that you can't see him anymore? Acting on it is maybe a sin ... but my God, just lusting after someone? Is that so bad?

Emma Goldman

#66. Acting is a really strange thing. You have to know when you're put in a bad situation, but you also have to be willing to do something very strange.

Alexandra Daddario

#67. 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

#68. I don't think my acting was ever bad; I always knew that I could do it. But when you go to audition for a drama, they're very serious in the room, and I was used to being kind of goofy and having small talk.

Mary Lynn Rajskub

#69. I originally envisioned myself doing something with the suffix 'ology' at the end of it, like marine biology or entomology. But after I started to do some acting gigs, I thought it wasn't a bad thing ... I said to myself, 'I might as well keep riding this bus until the wheels fall off.'

Callan McAuliffe

#70. Pitiful are those who, acting, are attached to their action's fruits. The wise man lets go of all results, whether good or bad, and is focused on the action alone. ~ Bhagavad Gita, c. 400 BCE ~ 2:49-50

Larry Chang

#71. 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

#72. 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

#73. 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

#74. The argument that 'boys will be boys' actually carries the profoundly anti-male implication that we should expect bad behavior from boys and men. The assumption is that they are somehow not capable of acting appropriately, or treating girls and women with respect.

Jackson Katz

#75. No one ever let me be a bad guy once I started working more frequently after I got out of college and started pursuing acting. I just got all of the good-guy roles because if I walk in the room, not a lot of people believe me as a bad guy.

Tom Everett Scott

#76. I am just a middle-class farm boy from Dodge City and my grandparents were wheat farmers. I thought painting, acting, directing and photography were all part of being an artist. I have made my money that way. And I have had some fun. It's not been a bad life.

Dennis Hopper

#77. I just let the work speak for itself. An actor is not afraid to take risks; to put on different hats; to be a good guy, a bad guy, a victim, an abuser. There are all kinds of people in the world, and playing them is what acting is all about.

Kevin Bacon

#78. You must make, always. You must act, if you believe something. Talking about acting is like boasting about pictures you're going to paint. The most terrible bad form.

John Fowles

#79. It's no use to go and take courses in playwriting any more than it's much use taking courses in acting. Better play to a bad matinee in Hull - it will teach you much more than a year of careful instruction. Come to think of it, I never did play to a good matinee in Hull ...

Noel Coward

#80. I stood there, watching her. The whole world was a dream, I realized. Everyone was acting in a bad soap opera. The whole world was one big FOX TV show.

Blake Nelson

#81. 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

#82. Yes, my buggy is outside and my horse has been acting up. I wondered if you could come rub its skull and tell me if it's got a bad case of stubborn, or if it might be indigestion?

Regina Jennings

#83. Hope doesn't come from calculating whether the good news is winning out over the bad. Its simply a choice to take action.

Anna Lappe

#84. All that day she felt as if she were acting in a theatre with better actors than herself, and that her bad performance was spoiling the whole affair.

Leo Tolstoy

#85. When I was in high school, I was a bad singer. I mean, all my early acting was musical theater, and my first ever show was 'Jesus Christ Superstar.' Everyone's familiar with it. I played priest number 3 and sang so out of tune that it's not even funny.

Sam Claflin

#86. A lot of acting requires you to be a charming version of yourself. A lot of what happens in the industry is that you are cast based on other things that people have seen you do, or how you are perceived to look or sound. If everyone thinks you're bizarre and creepy, then you play bad guys.

Matt Ross

#87. 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

#88. It's easy for me to play bad guys because it's a very linear acting. Bad guys aren't empathetic. Being a bad guy is great because you're not friendly and you don't have to do much with your face.

Henry Rollins

#89. If you're not in someone's face, they're not going to remember you. So get yourself back into an acting class; get a coach. Do those things you did when you were 20 and wanted it so bad.

Jake Busey

#90. There's good movies and there's bad movies. The genres are never dead, it's just about how to apply them and articulate them and execute them - the story, the quality of the writing, the acting, the design elements, the directorial execution - all these things make it what it is.

Andy Garcia

#91. Initially, it was my dream to get into RADA. Then I got in. So it became my dream to show them I wasn't half bad at acting.

Andrew Buchan

#92. I've always thought of acting as a tool to change society. I watch a lot of actors and I see panic in their eyes because they don't know why they act and I know why I act. Whether I'm a good or a bad actor, I know why I do it.

Andy Serkis

#93. Every soul is special. They're all beautiful. They're all far more significant than anyone on this rock realizes. I think when people are at their best, they're acting in accordance with their soul. The ones who have gone bad don't have bad souls. They've just given up on keeping in touch with them.

Jim Butcher

#94. Darling, don't be silly, your whole future is ahead of you. All you have to do is go out there and ask for a part- something small and reasonable just to start with. From there, no one can stop you. Don't feel bad about anything you've done, and for God's sake, have fun.

Anna Godbersen