Top 100 Great Actor Quotes
#1. I had admired Richard Burton for years and years before I had ever worked with him. He was a great, great actor. It was a joy to get to know him as a person.
Gale Gordon
#2. I like the Baldwin boys a great deal. Alec is super-smart, super-articulate, almost too smart to be an actor.
Anthony LaPaglia
#3. 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
#4. I never thought I would get married and have kids. I thought I was going to be a gypsy actor, traveling all over the world playing the great roles. I ended up having a kid very young, and it put things in perspective.
Bobby Cannavale
#5. I want to be a great actor someday, and I've decided there's no use philosophizing; the only way is to work at my craft.
Al Pacino
#6. 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
#7. You make that climb, take it step by step and hopefully the view is great. I try to be a friend for Miley. I know that's not everyone's parenting style. But I try to be a friend, a partner as a singer, actor, songwriter and let her be a teenage girl and do her thing.
Billy Ray Cyrus
#8. There are tons of different reasons why you do TV series and why you don't, and how it'll affect your career, and all that. Without a doubt, it has always come down to the script for me. I'm an actor who wants to do great parts, and I've been very fortunate, for a long time, to get meaty roles.
Patrick Wilson
#9. An actor equals, sometimes, an entitled baby. People take care of things for me, and they pay greater attention to things than I was ever capable of doing. But in the last few years, I have learned a great deal more about taking care of things. I pay my own bills now.
Christian Slater
#10. For any actor, it's a great privilege to play a character that is very distant from yourself.
James Norton
#11. It is tragic that we have lost one of our nation's finest actors in the prime of his life. Heath Ledger's diverse and challenging roles will be remembered as some of the great performances by an Australian actor.
Kevin Rudd
#13. My father was and is a great father. My father always wanted to do stand-up. He wanted to be an actor. But instead he did two jobs. He did customer service at a hospital and he worked as a waiter at night. He pretty much sacrificed everything for his daughters.
Sherri Shepherd
#14. Jake Johnson wanted to make clear that he was the great American actor, not just the funny guy on 'New Girl.'
Colin Trevorrow
#15. It's absolutely impossible to have a serious critical discussion about enthusiasms for movie stars. Because a movie star is an animal separate from acting. Sometimes, he or she is a great actor. Sometimes a third-rate one. But the star is something that you fall in love with ...
Peter Biskind
#16. Every end of the day is a great movie and the Sun above is surely the leading actor in this film!
Mehmet Murat Ildan
#17. I thought, 'Oh, this is great,' because maybe someone who does look like me will watch 'Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.' and realize that they can be an actor if they want to be, or they can be a superhero. They can have a hero that looks like them as well.
J. August Richards
#18. If you are a great dramatic actor then you often don't know if people are enjoying your stuff at all because they are sitting there in silence. But with comedy it's a simple premise. If it's funny, people laugh. If it's not, they don't.
Steve Coogan
#20. Mike Leigh taught me about making choices - as an actor, you choose between being honest and clever, and with Mike, it's always about being honest. I learned how to behave on a film set from Jim Broadbent. He was a great example of someone with a fantastic career who kept his feet on the ground.
Eddie Marsan
#21. Arnold Schwarzenegger, I don't know if you'd call him a great actor, but he's amazing in terms of his presence, and he is interesting enough that you want to watch him.
F. Murray Abraham
#22. As an actor, it's more interesting to play a nerd than anything else. It's a lot more fun - you don't worry about 'what's my hair like?' in the morning or 'which is my great angle?'
Nicholas Brendon
#23. It was great as an actor to be given the story line I was given but I didn't expect Craig to stay so it was a lovely twist when I found out they'd decided to keep him.
Richard Fleeshman
#24. It's always a really great thing to have an actor that does make you want to up your game. It naturally motivates you to do and try things that maybe you wouldn't necessarily do or try.
Johnny Galecki
#25. There aren't as many roles, and I think there's a lack of openness in casting an Asian character in a leading role or unless they're a stereotype. It's been hard. I've been able to play some non-stereotypical roles, which is great, but I have a lot of Asian actor friends who are struggling.
Kimiko Glenn
#26. One of the great bonuses of being a film actor is that I get to go to different places, meet inspiring people and learn different things. So all those details add up.
Nicolas Cage
#27. One thing that's great about being a character actor is that a movie doesn't rest on your shoulders. If it bombs, it won't hurt my career.
Joe Pantoliano
#28. One of the great things about my job is I get to do all of these things that I may not experience had I not been an actor.
Hilary Swank
#29. I do think, oddly, that a comedic actor has a better chance of pulling off a dramatic role than a great dramatic actor has of being able to pull off a highly comedic role.
Lizzy Caplan
#30. My default position is not to be an actor. My default position is to be a follower of Jesus Christ. If that means I continue in acting, great! I'd love that. But if it means I need to change professions someday because I can't provide for my family, well, that's what I need to do.
Kirk Cameron
#31. It's always hard as an actor I think to be just on the set and have the kind of confidence to be like, 'Yeah, I did that. That went perfectly. That's great.' That's more confidence than I have.
Noel Fisher
#32. As an actor, often you're stuck with these scenes in which a great period of time is in between them - for example, if you do a biopic, it might be a year, it might be a decade, you never know.
Aden Young
#33. When you're casting a movie and when you're shooting a film, the eyes are the most important feature of any performer, really. Any great actor literally knows exactly how to use their eyes, and even as a filmmaker I love shooting huge close-ups because it's those eyes that mean so much to me.
Peter Jackson
#34. I'm really enjoying being an actor right now, at this point in my life. It's a great job, it's a huge responsibility, and I just want to do it more.
Shannyn Sossamon
#35. So yeah, a good director will be able to listen and hear everything, but have a confident vision of his own that he can say, 'oh yeah - that's a great point.' And you never know; often you can help far more than you think you can, because there's so much more that he's juggling than an actor.
Christian Bale
#36. I think Ryan Gosling is a really great actor who's meticulous about his work. And I'd love to have the guts that Johnny Depp has to actually go outside the box on a character. When he plays a character, he plays it in a way that nobody else would.
Ashton Kutcher
#37. I am a great observer of things, and I do it all the time. I store stuff; I use it as an actor; that sort of recall, of emotional memory and images of things, just tastes of things.
Steve Bisley
#38. New York is a great place to be as an unrepresented actor because there are so many 'open auditions' that you can show up for without being submitted by an agent.
Catherine Mary Stewart
#39. I think what's great about that relationship between an actor and a Director is you have to really blow away all your thing, the safety things that you put up.
Hilary Swank
#40. I've worked with some of the great cinematographers. So I'm always watching what they do and I'm watching how the director composes his shots, just because I find it interesting as an actor; you're trying to help them out as well.
Eric Bana
#41. I find that all great directors, and I would include Ben Affleck and Clint Eastwood in that, they have great confidence. And with great confidence comes great freedom for the actor.
Amy Ryan
#42. To be honest I don't think I was any great shakes as a theatre actor because everything I was doing was really small in size - intimate.
Robert Carlyle
#44. It's a risk casting anyone against type or what they're known to do. But there's one thing better than having a great actor, which is having a great actor who's never done what you're asking him to do. He's hungry to get out of the trailer every day and hungry to test himself.
Sam Mendes
#45. For an actor, it's great fun to play one of these hungry white sharks. Audiences love to hate them.
Michael Douglas
#46. Getting bad reviews or doing something that's not great is also really good for you as an actor. It also makes me feel as an actor that I've earned my stripes a bit.
Greta Gerwig
#47. Men, you are about to embark on a great crusade to stamp out runaway decency in the west. Now you men will only be risking your lives, whilst I will be risking an almost certain Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor.
Harvey Korman
#48. My father started out as a riveter, but he had the soul of an artist. He worshiped Shakespeare and had aspirations to be an actor. He claimed that from the first day he laid eyes on me, I was going to be this great dramatic actress.
Christine Ebersole
#49. I don't want to infantilize the actor; I want to empower the actor. Actors can be many things, but all of the really good ones are really great storytellers, and I'm interested in that. If you're not interested in that as a director then you better be Stanley Kurbrick.
Paul Bettany
#50. I love people who expect me to wear great, feathery costumes- and I do it. It's like an actor getting into his costume for his part. I don't really feel that part until I'm into whatever I'm going to wear.
Elton John
#51. On a lot of shows that I've done, we had the same directors, which was cool. But then, it's also great to do shows where the director changes every week, because you get to see all these different personalities and see what you like dealing with better, as an actor.
Laura Prepon
#52. I think I probably think about myself as an actor, which is the way most people do. I think I'm good, I don't think I'm great. I think I would hire somebody else to play me in the movie about me.
Ashton Kutcher
#53. Wanting to be a good actor is not good enough. You must want to be a great actor. You just have to have that.
Gary Oldman
#54. The worst is when I talk myself into something. Sometimes you take things because you want to work with a certain actor, or you want to work with a director, even if the script or the part's not that great.
Jessica Lange
#55. I don't know if it's a actor thing or just growing as an adult, but the best thing I've learned is that everyone wants to do a great job, and everyone wants you to do a great job, too!
Christie Laing
#56. I mean, the great thing about being an actor is you can investigate parts of your brain that might have otherwise gone dormant.
Josh Peck
#57. Classics stay alive because a great actor or a great director wants to do them.
Scott Rudin
#58. 'The Fight Club' DVD is great. I like anything that has really good extras because as an actor, it's really great to see the behind-the-scenes stuff and see how different actors approach their particular project.
A. J. Cook
#59. I wasn't going to be an actor. I was going to be a lawyer. I came from a family just above working class, just below middle class, a great family of wonderful values. The idea of me having a chance for a law degree was enticing. Enticing to me but also very enticing to my family.
Gerard Butler
#60. Long ago, I was lucky enough to shoot 'Flashpoint' and 'Durham County' at the same time. It doesn't happen often in an actor's life that you get two great parts simultaneously.
Hugh Dillon
#61. The concealment of art by the actor is as great a mark of genius as it is in the painter.
Francois Delsarte
#62. I've grown tremendously as an actor by being there. It is comic writing the likes of which I don't know that I'll ever see again and it's been a great, great experience.
Matt LeBlanc
#63. I really think that everybody would like to be an actor. Why wouldn't they? It's great work if you can get it. The one thing that prevents most people from saying, 'I'm just gonna go to Hollywood!' is that it seems unrealistic.
Ben Affleck
#64. I'm not a great actor - let's face it. I don't have a great deal of scope. There are certain things I can do, but when I'm bad, I stink. There's something about my shaggy dog eyes that makes people think I'm good. I'm not all that good.
Steve McQueen
#65. The virtue you would like to have, assume it is already yours, appropriate it, enter into the part and live the character just as the great actor is absorbed in ... the part he plays.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
#66. A great actor is independent of the poet, because the supreme essence of feeling does not reside in prose or in verse, but in the accent with which it is delivered.
Lee Strasberg
#67. The early part of my career was the 1990s, and I was living in New York working as an actor. It was the world I was in. A lot of companies had a great deal of money.
Gaby Hoffmann
#68. Great actors help. Every project is different. Sometimes it's completely open, and I've been able to cast who I've wanted. And then sometimes people want a certain kind of actor.
Lisa Cholodenko
#69. Whether he's doing great acting or not, you're seeing somebody who is in the tradition of a great actor. What he does with it, that's something else, but he's got it all. The talent, the instrument is there, that's why he has endured.
Al Pacino
#70. I think that it's always great for any actor to play somebody who breathes and lives and is just a regular guy and has faults like we all do.
Juan Pablo Di Pace
#71. Different personalities inspire me as an actor. Especially quirky personalities, maybe people I wouldn't normally get along with or be friends with - I find them inspiring for my work. I find sad emotions to be inspiring and stories of great people that kind of overcame odds.
Laura Bell Bundy
#72. People told me, when I was coming through the ranks, that a mark of a great actor is one who deals with the period of unemployment as well as they deal with the period of employment.
Claudia Black
#73. I feel very fortunate, I've been exposed to a lot of different cultures. If I wasn't from a multi-ethnic background, I wouldn't have had these great experiences. And one of the things that makes me a good actor is life experience.
Navi Rawat
#74. John Barrymore was a serious actor who did a great deal of research for all his parts, until, I guess, he was around 50. Then he started drinking heavily ... So he drank himself to death. It took him 10 years.
John Carradine
#75. As an actor, to do all sorts of different films is great.
Hugo Weaving
#76. It always bothered me when people came off stage and were told how great they were. They weren't, really, in my opinion. It was then I started thinking that, contrary to conventional wisdom, film was the artful medium for the actor, not the stage.
Jack Nicholson
#77. A lot of people try to paint this child actor stigma, but I always looked at it as a great opportunity.
Zachery Ty Bryan
#78. I watched a film with a very famous, great, great actor, I won't mention his name because everyone loves his memory, but I thought, "God he was acting a lot." Great actor, but nonstop acting. Wall to wall, fitted-carpet acting.
Anthony Hopkins
#79. I know every actor says this, but the people behind the camera are great. They always have answers.
Joel Gretsch
#80. The atmosphere and the environment that you get on a Chris Nolan film that he and Emma [Tomson] create is one where you feel very safe and very confident and able to experiment with characters. It's a great place to be as an actor.
Christopher Nolan
#81. Paul Robeson was an athlete, Rutgers valedictorian, lawyer, writer, actor in movies and plays, great voice - a black male doing it all, back when some people thought he shouldn't. One reason I do all the things I do is to break stereotypes that people can only do certain things.
Dhani Jones
#82. One of my favorite comedies is 'Groundhog Day' and 'Scrooged.' I love Bill Murray, and I think he's a great example of an actor who is funny.
Fiona Gubelmann
#83. Show me a great actor and I'll show you a lousy husband. Show me a great actress, and you've seen the devil.
W.C. Fields
#84. It's great, it's a creative process! It's something that I've been hungry for and I feel like I'm getting fed every day! We've got Adam and Joe in the room, and it's intense but it's a good intensity, you know? It's kind of like an actor's dream.
Kendra Kassebaum
#85. I didn't intend to even become an actor. I was studying fashion, and I think acting just happened by chance. It really felt more like I was watching a movie from outside, like it was happening to someone else. It's been a great journey so far.
Sonakshi Sinha
#86. ...as an actor there's nothing better than a great moody moment to play with nothing to say. It's so much easier to do because you can really get inside your head.
Ewan McGregor
#87. We normally think that theist religions sanctified the great gods. We tend to forget that they sanctified humans, too. Hitherto Homo sapiens had been just one actor in a cast of thousands. In the new theist drama, Sapiens became the central hero around whom the entire universe revolved.
Yuval Noah Harari
#88. But really, for the most part - doing a prequel is great because you do have room to kind of free this character and how they got to where they are instead of being a slave to exactly what the previous actor did.
Jennifer Lawrence
#89. Josh Brolin is an actor that I really, really like; he's fantastic. I worked with him once; he's a really great actor.
Rob Zombie
#90. Nicolas Cage is a great actor and he's done some good action movies too.
Dolph Lundgren
#91. What I hope in my ideal world is that with each project, I'll either get to work with a really great script that would force me to grow, or work with a really great actor who will make me better.
Laura Linney
#92. Rajni Sir is very dedicated and punctual. It was great experience acting with him both as a person and as an actor. The way he maintains himself is amazing.
Nayantara
#93. I became an actor by doing school plays and youth theaters, and then National Youth Theatre of Great Britain. And then I did study at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Arts. For me that was a good way to enter the field, to work in the theater.
Chiwetel Ejiofor
#94. To be honest, I don't necessarily think you have to be an actor to act. You don't have to be a musician to make great music. If it comes along and you put your all into it, the outcome is what's important.
Andre Benjamin
#95. He [Kenneth Branagh] is the nicest guy. He is absolutely fantastic. Hes really down to earth, really friendly, and he has a great sense of humor. I really liked working with him. Hes a fantastic actor as well. Theres such a presence about him.
Emma Watson
#96. It's never going to get better than working opposite an actor like Jeff Bridges. That's as good as it gets. I don't even know what to refer to him as. He's just a great guy. He's iconic on his own merits.
Sam Elliott
#97. If I wasn't an actor, I'd be a teacher, a history teacher. After all, teaching is very much like performing. A teacher is an actor, in a way. It takes a great deal to get, and hold, a class.
Richard Dreyfuss
#98. To my mind, the actor has this great responsability of playing another human being ... it's like taking on another person's life and you have to do it as sincerely and honestly as you can.
Edward G. Robinson
#99. I want to work with great filmmakers and great actors and get better as an actor.
Bradley Cooper
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