Camera Acting Quotes

#1. Modeling teaches you to be completely conscious of the camera. Acting is being totally unconscious of it.

Phoebe Cates

#2. I was probably 34 when I got my first on-camera acting job, and it was through a friend of mine, who was working as a writer on the show, and I've never been more frightened in my life.

Kurt Fuller

#3. For women and men, but especially women, with on camera acting you have to look a certain way. You have to present yourself as the most attractive version of yourself that you can be, and then you're judged based on how attractive you are or if you are the right look for the character.

Ashly Burch

#4. Sometimes you're watching a great film actor, and if you stand 10 feet away from them, you're like, 'God, they're terrible. They're not doing anything.' And then you see the close-up, and it's so nuanced, and so much expression is happening. They were acting for that camera and for no one else.

Finn Wittrock

#5. You can be in an acting class all you want, but you don't fully learn until you get off that stage and in front of a camera.

Nicholas Lea

#6. I've been acting since I was 2 and have always been on camera but doing a video is different because when you're acting, you pretend the camera's not there and you just do the scene and with a music video you're right in the camera so it feels weird sometimes.

Corbin Bleu

#7. My acting stopped being about disguise and became about truth which suits the camera, so my film career took off when I came out.

Ian McKellen

#8. There were moments - I would be daydreaming - I would imagine scenes, even if there wasn't a camera around. In my head, I was acting.

Eric Cantona

#9. You've got to love acting and that's true for me. I love the idea of getting on stage and getting in front of a camera.

Warwick Davis

#10. Making a pretty picture, an image, is a completely different thing from acting to camera.

Gemma Chan

#11. To be honest, I don't see myself acting forever. I just can't imagine myself being a 70-year-old man fighting for roles. I would love to do small parts in my friends' movies or things that I'm directing myself. I do envision myself behind the camera as I get a little bit older.

Dave Franco

#12. Learning about acting for camera is really quite exciting to engage with and deal with.

George Blagden

#13. As a teenager, I loved acting, painting, photography, and making films with my friend's Super 8 camera. But I always loved writing the best. I chose writing even before I knew poetry was available to me.

Denise Duhamel

#14. I'm not scared of many things in front of the camera. Everywhere else, yes, I'm terrified. But acting is just pretending, and you are exploring feelings in a safe environment.

Julianne Moore

#15. The trick to being a good actor is getting so involved in your character that the camera disappears, the 50 bored guys eating doughnuts disappear, friends disappear. To get to that point when you don't have to think about it, you're just acting and reacting in those circumstances.

Val Kilmer

#16. I'm really shy with my acting when it's off, because the camera gives me an excuse to be in character, whereas otherwise I would just feel like an idiot.

Brendan Fehr

#17. Acting's all about the confidence you exude, especially on film. I mean, nervousness isn't attractive in anyone, but a film camera will seek it out and punish you.

John C. Reilly

#18. Acting, to me, is being given the freedom and ability to play, and that's - that's what I love most about it. I feel very comfortable in playing, whether it be in front of a camera or on stage.

David Wenham

#19. There is a bit of acting involved when you get in front of a camera for a video. Even when you perform onstage, you're putting on a show.

Aaliyah

#20. When I get in front of a camera all my fears and my inhibitions just go away. As a model, I feel that I am acting, too, playing different parts and showing different facets of myself.

Marisa Berenson

#21. I do love acting the two seconds that you are in front of the camera - and this is going to sound like I'm complaining, and I don't want that because I'm blessed to even have a job - but there is a lot of down-time when you're just sitting in your trailer.

Rene Russo

#22. This acting's serious! And I really respect those actors. It's a tough business to be able to be something you're not and be natural and convince people on camera.

Michael Strahan

#23. 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

#24. I don't like, and I've never been very good at, close-up shots. As soon as you have the camera right there in front of you, it feels like you're in a different reality from the person you are acting with; you lose any real connection with them.

Eve Best

#25. The camera does not like acting. The camera is only interested in filming behaviour. So you damn well learn your lines until you know them inside out, while standing on your head!

Ben Kingsley

#26. I'm glad I took the leap away from acting into going behind the camera because it's much more satisfying - I love acting and I still do, but it's much more satisfying to be able to make the stuff.

Paul Feig

#27. When I was little, I didn't know you got paid for acting. My parents put the money in the bank for me, but I just thought it was this fun thing that I was so excited to do. You got to be on the set and get a little bit of makeup and be on camera.

Chelan Simmons

#28. I love acting; I don't want to give up on it at all, but it would be nice to step behind the camera once in a while as well.

Lee Norris

#29. When I'm acting, I'm two beings. There's the one monitoring the distance between myself and the camera, making sure I hit my marks, and there is the one driven by this inner fire, this delicious fear.

Jeanne Moreau

#30. My dad was always taking photos of us at home, and even on set - he'd bring us along and stick us in the photos in the background. It was almost the beginning of acting for me, like, 'Hey, you go over there and play basketball in the background, and don't even think about the camera.'

Ansel Elgort

#31. 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

#32. I still enjoy acting. I love the moment in front of the camera, but it's all the other moments that I don't enjoy. The 'business' aspect of it, the gossip.

Jennie Garth

#33. It was extremely useful to grow up in front of the camera. It gives the camera no significance. I think it helped me have perspective on things. The attraction that Hollywood can have, I feel like I'm over that. Instead I just concentrate on acting.

Giovanni Ribisi

#34. When I'm on an adult set and I'm in a scene, I am myself. I'm not acting. I am playing to the camera, definitely, but I am myself.

Sasha Grey

#35. I was mainly a stage actor. I found film acting mechanical, because it was so technical - there was so much technique with the lamps and the movements of the camera.

Erland Josephson

#36. I was never interested in becoming an actor. I was directing videos. I was never into acting. I was into shooting music videos. I've only ever been behind the camera. Never in front of it.

Barkhad Abdi

#37. Good acting is thinking in front of the camera. I just do that and apply a sense of humor to it. You have to trust the audience to get it.

Charles Grodin

#38. My background is a small town with no movie theater. So ... I always pictured myself onstage. I went to acting school and learned all the skills. I left early because I did my first movie and discovered that I really loved the minimalistic work with the camera.

Franka Potente

#39. At least when you're acting you can be someone. In front of the camera you have to be yourself. And who am I?

Stephen Rea

#40. So anyway, I've learned a lot about myself just in terms of acting but just work ethic and interesting things like full-page monologues or talking straight into camera, which I had never gotten to do before.

Emma Stone

#41. I had started off, before I ever got an acting job, working at Robert De Niro's Tribeca Productions as a reader. I was always interested in that side of the camera.

Mira Sorvino

#42. In Hitchcock's eyes the movement was dramatic, not the acting. When he wanted the audience to be moved, he moved the camera. He was a subtle human being, and he was also the best director I have ever worked with.

Bruce Dern

#43. I've read all of Shakespeare and practiced a lot of lines ... I am going to do Juliet first. Don't laugh. What, with what makeup, costume and camera can do, my acting will create a Juliet who is 14, an innocent virgin.

Marilyn Monroe

#44. I came rather late to film. I've done an awful lot of theater before - before I discovered the camera, you know, seeing everything, requiring much less acting and - and much less presentation, much less projecting, more just being.

Ian McKellen

#45. I'm a fan of making films. Whether I'm on stage or in front of a camera, one of my first loves is performing for the people. I'd like to do more acting.

Busta Rhymes

#46. The first time I saw 'Private Practice,' I was hooked. The camera work is captivating, the acting is the-best-of-the-best amazing, and each storyline is so interesting and different.

Rachel G. Fox

#47. That was the beginning of modern acting for me. You don't have to tell a camera everything. It gets bored if you do and wants to look elsewhere.

Stephen Rea

#48. The play is the source, it is orchestrated with words. In a movie, you are not dealing with as much as that. There are machines and wires. When you're acting for a camera, it keeps taking and never giving back.

Al Pacino

#49. I went to college and got my degree in acting, but because it was all theater, I really consider my first couple years on 'Mad Men' as amazing training for working in television and for acting on-camera.

Gillian Jacobs

#50. I love acting. Acting's always been my first love. I grew up watching multi-camera television shows ... And I thought I would absolutely be in for that.

Seth Green

#51. I grew up around horses, but acting and riding on camera is a whole different thing.

Emilia Clarke

#52. It's whether they have a vision and whether they're able to communicate it. The best director is just someone who gets over-excited about doing it - they don't even have to know much about camera or acting.

Colin Firth

#53. I'm very in love with the fact that the camera is revolted by acting and loves behaviour.

Ben Kingsley

#54. What motivates every other decision artistically or technically is the acting. This is what motivates everything. Never can a camera move be incompatible with the emotion of the actor at that moment. The movement, the style, the atmosphere, everything is dictated by the actor.

Xavier Dolan

#55. After 2000 or so, I started to realize I wanted to be doing something else. I didn't want to be in front of a camera. I was frustrated. I didn't think I would stop acting, but I didn't want to be seen.

Ben Affleck

#56. I've dealt with a few method actors, and I don't know if should say this, but I think it's a bunch of nonsense. I think it's film acting and you just have to be on when the camera is rolling.

Natalie Portman

#57. When someone's acting for a scene, they can fool the camera. But in everyday life, unless you're watching and censoring yourself every minute, or spending all your time in the company of ladies, what you feel is bound to show in your eyes.

Cesar Romero

#58. In my years of acting, the one thing I was never able to do convincingly was to laugh on camera. Fake-laugh.

Paul Feig

#59. You don't want to say somebody did a great job of acting. You want to say, "Where did he find that person? How did he get that factory worker to come out of the factory and be on camera?" You want to believe that person is real.

Ronee Blakley

#60. My acting technique is to look up at God just before the camera rolls and say, 'Give me a break.'

James Caan

#61. I've wanted to do some sort of acting stuff down the line, but modeling is a good way to get comfortable in front of the camera.

Patrick Schwarzenegger

#62. I always thought acting was all lights, camera, action. It's a job; you have to do your job correctly.

Corey Haim

#63. 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

#64. I tend to want to go quite big in my acting, which you just cannot do in front of a camera. It's taken me a while to learn how to pull it back.

Phoebe Fox

#65. 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

#66. Acting in 'Command & Conquer 3' called for me to interact with the player and to look directly into the camera, which is a big no no when filming for TV or film.

Grace Park

#67. 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

#68. 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

#69. With modeling, you pose. You want to look your best all the time. With acting, you have to be aware of the camera, but the more you show your imperfections, the better you're going to be.

Diane Kruger

#70. 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

#71. I don't like acting; not in front of the camera.

Spike Lee

#72. With film, you have very limited tools to convey subjectivity - voiceover, the camera's point of view, good acting - but even the very best actor in the world is crude by comparison with what you can do in a written paragraph.

William Boyd

#73. You know, everyone says, 'Modeling and acting are so similar' ... they say, 'It's so natural for models to become actresses because they use the camera.' I don't think of it in that way.

Gisele Bundchen

#74. I grew up in New York, so I fell in love with acting on a stage, not in front of a camera.

Kerry Washington

#75. I do tend to like movies that challenge me professionally. That's mostly on a smaller scale, when you have one or two or five actors, and it's all about the acting and not the camera.

Ayelet Zurer

#76. I have been taking classes and I'm familiar with stage, but I'm not as familiar with acting on camera.

Kevin Richardson

#77. I just love the whole art form of acting, of being in front of a camera and playing different things. Not that I would ever say I'm the greatest actor in the world, but I am capable of playing different kinds of roles that emotionally I could get into.

Andrew Dice Clay

#78. I prefer directing to acting. There is huge freedom that comes from being behind the camera. It brings a lot of responsibilities as well, but is intensely rewarding. Particularly the chance to help draw out the best in young actors.

Angelina Jolie

#79. It's difficult, if not impossible, to get away with anything false before the camera. That instrument penetrates the husk of the actor; it reveals what's truly happening - if anything, if nothing. A close-up demands absolute truth. It's a severe and awesome truth

Elia Kazan

#80. The MTV thing is the thing that I will always tip my hat to because that was like my acting class and how I got comfortable in front of a camera and how I kind of created my own thing.

Pauly Shore

#81. The camera lens or the television camera is still just a proscenium arch. And as a great old character actor once said to me, wherever you're acting, you reach up and take hold of the proscenium arch, and you pull it down around your shoulders.

Robert Preston

#82. We [musicians] are comfortable in front of the camera doing music videos, and it's almost a form of acting when we're doing music videos. We're acting out our own thoughts and what we've written down on paper.

Ludacris

#83. I'm not a photographer, so I didn't get into F-stops or ND filters or background, foreground, cross-light, all that stuff. But I was interested in the camera and the lenses. That's the world that I'm moving in, in terms of acting and giving a performance.

Keanu Reeves

#84. I'll never stop acting, but music is another passion of mine. I just love creating projects in the entertainment field and performing onstage or in front of a camera.

Katherine McNamara

#85. You learn a lot about acting and being physical and being on stage, but there is technical stuff on camera that you can't learn until you do it.

Finn Wittrock

#86. I definitely knew that I loved acting from the very beginning. I was such a ham growing up. Wherever the camera was, I wanted to be right in front of it.

Naya Rivera

#87. You're used to having a camera in your face when you're playing a character - it's like having a mask on. But when you have to be you, you're so worried you'll make an idiot of yourself. Acting is a kind of escapism.

Sheridan Smith

#88. I went from off-off Broadway. I would direct plays in Baldwin Hills. Almost Tyler Perry-like, really trying to express myself in that and not really knowing how to, knowing acting in story, but not really knowing how to technically hold a camera.

Lee Daniels

#89. With film acting, and often when the camera comes very close, you just have to think about something and the camera will pick it up.

Ruth Wilson

#90. I love being on stage or in front of the camera. My work brings me a lot of joy. It helps me figure out who I am. I'm really lucky that I get to make a living at acting.

Dana Delany

#91. Acting time is like flight time: You can work on a simulator, you can rehearse, but unless you're really in front of the camera or on a stage - that's when you really learn how to work it.

John Kapelos

#92. Early on, someone had told me, 'You know, the camera can always tell when you're lying.' And, Jesus, that intimidated me. 'The camera can always tell? How am I going to do this?' Until one day I thought, 'Wait a minute, acting is lying. Acting is all about lying.'

Michael Douglas

#93. That first year at Universal was a big blur and, naturally, I thought they were wasting me. I didn't realize at the time that I was learning my craft and acting more easily in front of the camera.

Kent McCord

#94. I think I've found a purpose in acting; it's something I truly love and truly enjoy. It makes me happy. It makes me understand more about life, in front of the camera, than what I'm living beyond the camera.

Ranbir Kapoor