Good Acting Quotes

#1. Everyone brings their own particular skill set to the job, and acting training can work for a lot of actors, and it can't. I've seen a lot of really good actors go into acting schools and then come out a little bit corrupted.

Xavier Samuel

#2. To step into acting was not that difficult a transition to make. What was difficult was the work and the practice that went into becoming good at it, because I hadn't had any training.

Queen Latifah

#3. 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

#4. 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

#5. 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

#6. My goal was for acting to become my main income. I would say to myself, 'I'm good enough.' That became my mantra.

Michael Fassbender

#7. 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

#8. 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

#9. Acting is always something I thought I could do, and I thought I would be pretty good at it, but I thought that I missed the opportunity, that it was too late.

Greg Poehler

#10. 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

#11. Acting was always a part and faucet of my life. It just comes very natural. I think it's a good thing.

Nicki Minaj

#12. Acting is the only thing I'm even vaguely good at and acting is something that I think I do know about.

Martin Freeman

#13. High school is just horrible in general. So, I think it was a good time for me to have stopped acting. I got to be normal in high school.

Jodie Sweetin

#14. Modeling is great because I don't have lines to memorize. But I find acting much more challenging - which is a good thing!

Candace Kita

#15. You're starting to look like you did before, and that's not good because what you looked like was complete shit, so get up and go to bed so I can stop acting like your mother. I can already feel my balls starting to recede. And hey, does it look like I'm growing breasts? - Kye

Krista Alasti

#16. The mug is a tool. My ace in the hole. To have looks is the bonus on top of what motivates me to be an actor. Not to realize they're an asset would be counterproductive to the cause; they serve the common good.

Billy Zane

#17. Acting doesn't feel good. It's not comfortable to feel all this stuff, it's not.

Tea Leoni

#18. The Song is a gritty, realistic, and powerful film. The acting and production quality are excellent, and the story is captivating. Although not for children, the story is a good reminder to adults of what really matters!

Alex Kendrick

#19. Acting, I love it and I feel that I'm good at it, but the thing that makes me feel most alive is when I'm playing guitar and singing.

Taryn Manning

#20. It's stressful to keep doing audition after audition after audition. You finish one and go to the next one, and you have to learn lines. For me, I have to work on my accent, so I was getting accent coaching and acting coaching. I wanted to make good impressions.

Luke Mitchell

#21. I would just like to be able to give to people through acting. If I can entertain people by being somebody else and allow somebody to feel something, then that makes me feel good.

Melanie Griffith

#22. I don't see many people with longevity anymore. Everything was harder when I started, and you had to take acting lessons, do theater parts, work on connections and then get lucky. The technology is good, but it's also a hindrance for longevity.

Dustin Diamond

#23. I don't get a rush from anything. I did music as hard as I could. Acting for me at least, is a far more restrained performance than music. It requires a lot of skill and discipline. I'm not any good at it but I enjoy trying to be good at it.

Henry Rollins

#24. The problem with acting is that there's really no control. You're at the behest of others. Everyone else decides if you did a good job and you have to wait for other people's permission to work as an actor.

Leigh Whannell

#25. As it is with a play, so it is with life - what matters is not how long the acting lasts, but how good it is.

Seneca.

#26. As I've been acting since I was young it's taught me to give a good speech, and, though I say so myself, I did it pretty well.

Jonathan Krohn

#27. 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

#28. It is good to exercise patience. But never let your patience be the type that will keep you refrained from acting.

Israelmore Ayivor

#29. You need to be well versed with acting if you want to prove yourself good at every situation of life. Don't be too conscious about everything. Just let go and accept the good and bads!!

Nelson Jack

#30. The theater has never been any good since the actors became gentlemen.

W. H. Auden

#31. We've defined decency down now that we look at the entertainment value of it, whether the acting is good, the writing is good, the story is good, no matter the depravity, we'll watch it.

Rush Limbaugh

#32. I was blessed with my career. I passionately love acting. And it's given me a good livelihood.

George Takei

#33. 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

#34. I don't really know how to act that much. I'm quite good at comedy, but it's mostly acting naturally.

T. J. Miller

#35. I suppose once in a while, a filmmaker makes a movie that's more than just a sum of its parts, more than good acting or good filmmaking. It's something else that has nothing to do with what you've done. This is in 1999, made by people in 1999 for people in 1999 about people in 1999.

Sam Mendes

#36. Acting for me is like a ping-pong game. That's the secret of acting. When you have a really good actor, I always want to be as good as he is or she is.

Sibel Kekilli

#37. I've been called a funny person, for a long time. I don't know that I know anything about comedic acting. I'm not a good improver, which is what a lot of comedic actors are really good at. I have failed miserably when I've been asked to improvise.

John Cho

#38. Good acting comes from finding the essence of a character.

John Larroquette

#39. I actually grew up hearing this a lot: 'If you're an actor, you can only be an actor, and you have to just do that.' But in order to be a good actor, you have to draw on life experiences. To only concentrate on acting, you're cutting yourself off.

Todd Louiso

#40. If it's well written and well directed and you've got good actors to work with, acting is easy. But making sure all the ducks are in a row is the hard part. It's very rare.

John Lithgow

#41. An acting career usually has about a shelf life of ten years before people get sick of seeing you. It's a good thing to have a job to fall back on and I really do enjoy directing.

George Clooney

#42. Every film by Will Smith, Harry Belafonte, Sidney Poitier, Lena Horne, Ruby Dee, Don Cheadle will have great acting and carry good messages in the film. The films starring those actors are the films I tell young people to watch for good acting and to view for quality movies.

Brian J. White

#43. You need to become a good listener. As you're working, you hear someone else's lines and how you absorb them becomes your acting.

Jacqueline Bisset

#44. Good acting is good acting, however you learn it. Some people who haven't studied are amazing. Some people like Leonardo DiCaprio are naturally gifted - he's learned technique by working with people early on.

Sam Rockwell

#45. Some deeply untrusting actors - the kind that need to know exactly what's what and are completely insecure - might be quite good within the parameters of a certain sort of acting.

Mike Leigh

#46. Movie acting suits me because I only need to be good for ninety seconds at a time.

Bill Murray

#47. I really need to work. People think that I'm no longer interested in acting and only interested in working with the animals. Obviously I have given that impression, but it is not how I feel. I think I'm a good actor. I think I look OK. I don't understand why I'm not working all the time.

Tippi Hedren

#48. I hate taxing my mind with analysis. I'm not a good analyst. I cannot talk about acting. I hate talking about it. I hate talking about analyzing.

Anthony Hopkins

#49. I had just arrived in New York from California. I was nineteen years old and excited beyond belief. I was an art student and an acting student and behaved as most young actors did - meaning that there was no such thing as a good actor, 'cause you yourself hadn't shown up yet.

Robert Redford

#50. I am very happy acting, and just have never gone at, or been bitten by the directing bug to the extent where I'm willing to put acting aside. If offered the opportunity, I think I could do a good job with the right material.

Stephen Lang

#51. For me, acting goes to a special place; it's almost mystical. You have to let go of what you think is good; it's a jump into trust, and trying to reach without wanting too much.

Juliette Binoche

#52. Since being diagnosed with Asperger's, I'd been working with an acting coach who has now become a good friend. We'd been trying lots of improvisational techniques to help me with some of the problems I experience. But it's a very slow process.

Paddy Considine

#53. Hollywood no longer offers entertainment. Instead, activism has replaced acting, and sermons have supplanted stories. Instead of a good yarn, you get a yawn.

Ilana Mercer

#54. My first paid job was delivering newspapers. The first paid acting job I got was dressing up as Edam cheese and handing out leaflets on London's Oxford Street. I got pushed over by these little herberts and given a good shoe-in.

Jason Flemyng

#55. I've only been acting since 2009 and I learn more and more with each job. I think I prepare and I'm very focused and I have a good work ethic that I learned in school.

Jenny Slate

#56. Tris," he says. "What did they do to you? You're acting like a lunatic."
"That's not very nice of you to say," I say. "They put me in a good mood, that's all. And now I really want to kiss you, so if you could just relax-

Veronica Roth

#57. In the acting world, you can really only become good by practicing and doing it, and I just think every time you walk onto a set you just become better and better. I think I'm in a totally different space than I was back then on that first movie set.

Terrence J

#58. It's a fine line of doing what's good for your life and what your parents want you to do, but also following your dreams. With my parents, when I was younger, I always had to do two things. If I was acting, I always had to do a sport or something on the arts side of things along with that.

Kaley Cuoco

#59. God has been acting honorably throughout history regrading what He wants. We're the ones at fault. God is good. And I still really, truly like Him

Dee Henderson

#60. Unexpressed good thoughts aren't worth squat!

Kenneth H. Blanchard

#61. It feels like as you get a bit older, you've worked out the things that are good for your life apart from with acting.

Dolly Wells

#62. I like to rehearse with the actors scenes that are not in the script and will not be in the film because what we're really doing is trying to establish their character, and good acting to me is about reacting.

Jim Jarmusch

#63. It doesn't matter to me whether I go back to outer space or not [while acting]. The job's the same and I don't have any sort of genre preferences. I'm looking for a good story and a good character, whether earthbound or not.

Harrison Ford

#64. It's always at the back of my mind that acting might come to an end for me when Harry Potter finishes. I don't know if I'm good enough to have a long career. I've got a bit of an inferiority complex about my acting. My self-esteem is quite low in that sense.

Rupert Grint

#65. All I really want to do is just keep acting, and some of it will stink, and some of it will be really good, and maybe when I'm 85 and presenting an Oscar like Bette Davis did, I can look back and say, 'It was okay, I did all right.'

Whoopi Goldberg

#66. And maybe now it's about telling the occasional story that I recently believe in and think would be good to put out there into the world. But I look back, that crying taught me how to approach everything in life. Acting or Otherwise.

Drew Barrymore

#67. Some people are good at performing in front of people like that, but I'm uncomfortable at it. I think maybe that's the difference between acting and being a performer. I don't think I'm a natural performer.

Kristen Stewart

#68. Vary the pace ... is one of the foundations of all good acting.

Ellen Terry

#69. People are basically good, and when they are in possession of the full truth, they usually do the right things.

Bryant McGill

#70. Since life requires a specific course of action, any other course will destroy it. A being who does not hold his own life as the motive and goal of his actions, is acting on the motive and standard of death.

Ayn Rand

#71. If you want to play the good roles, spend more time in in college and in acting class than you do in the gym, and you'll have the career you want.

Wendi McLendon-Covey

#72. 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

#73. Don't delay acting on a good idea. Chances are someone else has just thought of it, too. Success comes to the one who acts first.

H. Jackson Brown Jr.

#74. White people are very good at acting like they're not racist. They deserve an Academy Award for that.

Paul Mooney

#75. I was a hostess in a restaurant in New York when I was 21, and I was too good of an employee. I was putting most of my energy into that instead of acting. But my father told my sister and me to look at whatever needed to be done and do that job well, no matter what it was.

Emily Deschanel

#76. If you're a kid at a secondary comprehensive in North London as I was in the seventies, prancing around doing acting and being a luvvie wasn't really a good idea for your personal security.

Steve McFadden

#77. There was more good acting at Hollywood parties than ever appeared on the screen.

Bette Davis

#78. Sometimes I think it's so good not to win those things. And, anyway, who wants to peak when they're 28?

Cate Blanchett

#79. I'm not that good of an actor to fake something like that.

Dana Burkey

#80. My acting career wasn't going where I wanted it to. I wasn't getting good parts. I got so bored with myself that I started writing.

Susan Strasberg

#81. I love acting. I love play-acting. I love pretending. I love telling stories so whether they be comedic or serious or whatever, it doesn't really matter to me. I enjoy telling a good story. I have it all in me.

Jim Carrey

#82. Most of my training at graduate school was geared towards drama, so I feel good about it, and I can do it, but it requires a lot more work from me. I feel like with drama ... well, with all acting, really, you need to honor the truth of the situation.

Andrea Anders

#83. I was never good at that Disney/Nickelodeon kind of acting. It's not really my cup of tea.

Morgan Saylor

#84. It's a good time for me to pursue acting, I suppose since I'm enjoying having another medium in which to express myself. I've been getting a great response to my work.

Lenny Kravitz

#85. All you've got to do is turn up and have a few facial tics and be a lunatic and throw someone around the room or blow their brains out and people think it's good acting.

Paddy Considine

#86. 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

#87. I don't think many actors are the best judge of careers. I think generally we have good instincts about what we can do in terms of acting. And often they become directors, which I don't want to be.

Hugh Jackman

#88. When I started acting, I was told over and over again, 'You're no good.' But I said to myself, 'You've got to keep it up.'

Salma Hayek

#89. I love watching Billy Bob, just as a punter anyway. I like his work. But working with him is really easy and really straight-forward. He's immediately good. He doesn't have to work up to it. He doesn't make your life difficult. He listens. He's a very good listener, in terms of his acting.

Martin Freeman

#90. I only had one focus and one direction, and I knew where my spirit and heart lived, and it was in singing and dancing and acting, being that. I know a lot of young people dream that, but it's good that it worked out for me because it was all I ever wanted to do.

Cheryl Ladd

#91. 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

#92. With acting, if I'm any good at it, my modeling career would never be a hindrance but would rather be a help. And if I'm not, then it doesn't really matter.

Lily Cole

#93. 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

#94. The basic laws of good acting are the same, but everything about the experience is different-your job responsibility, the time you spend on it.

Laura Linney

#95. There are these mythic unicorn-y tales of method acting, but Marlon [Brando] wanted to have a good time.

Johnny Depp

#96. I don't make much distinction between being a stand-up comic and acting Shakespeare - in fact, unless you're a good comedian, you're never going to be able to play Hamlet properly.

Ian McKellen

#97. With music, you could stick someone with a musical instrument or even not a musical instrument, get them to showcase their talent, and within 30 seconds you could tell whether they were good or not, but with acting you have to give them the right part.

Ed Sheeran

#98. Acting and recording an album at the same time, that's not my sport. I could write a movie when my attention was paid to that. But I'm good at one thing at a time.

Chuck Inglish

#99. Actors need a kind of aggression, a kind of inner force. Don't be only one-sided, sweet, nice, good. Get rid of being average. Find the killer in you.

Stella Adler

#100. I need good grades because I want to go on to do A-Levels. I'm just not sure yet about whether I will go to university, because I really want to see what happens with the acting.

Georgia Groome