Movie Actor Quotes

#1. I guess any movie actor can become a role model for audiences out there who enjoy him.

Clint Eastwood

#2. Instead of being a theater actor who sometimes does movies I became a movie actor who sometimes does theater.

John Lithgow

#3. The difference between a movie star and a movie actor is this - a movie star will say, 'How can I change the script to suit me?' and a movie actor will say. 'How can I change me to suit the script?'

Michael Caine

#4. All my life, I have taken inventory at intervals. For example, when I became a movie actor and suddenly I had to deal with fame, money and playing so many roles, I lost myself. I said, 'Who am I?' And I wrote my first book to deal with that, 'The Ragman's Son.'

Kirk Douglas

#5. As a movie actor, once you've become known, you're observed all the time so you don't get the chance to observe anymore. You still get a taste of life but it's not quite the same and there's something to be said for a more anonymous life.

Clint Eastwood

#6. If you're a movie actor, you're on your own - you cannot control the stage. The director controls it.

Michael Caine

#7. I'm basically a movie actor now, and my big roles are mostly horror movies - unless I'm doing a guest star or something - and occasionally I try to get back into television.

Robert Englund

#8. It used to be that you kind of got pigeonholed into one thing - you're either a stage actor or a TV actor or a movie actor. Today, there's a lot of crossover with film actors doing television, which never happened before, so those lines are a little bit more blurred than they used to be.

Aaron Tveit

#9. I was always ambitious. I always wanted to be more than I was ... I always wanted to be a movie actor.

Morgan Freeman

#10. What use is there for a biography of myself? I'm just a movie actor.

Conrad Veidt

#11. To be honest, I sort of feel like 'movie actor' isn't of this time. I love it. But it's a 20th-century art form.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt

#12. Marlon Brando is the most influential movie actor of the century.

Roger Ebert

#13. I'm really in no danger of being perceived as a famous movie actor!

Lyle Lovett

#14. The advice you give to young directors for sure is to go out and become some version of a successful movie actor. Do that first and say yes to people like Terrence Malick and Clint Eastwood and Woody Allen when they come and offer you movies. It's a great front row seat to filmmaking.

Sean Penn

#15. For a long time I was embarrassed to say I was a 'B' movie actor, ... But now that I see what Hollywood's putting out, I realized 'B' actually means 'better.'

Bruce Campbell

#16. Everyone wants to label me, but I don't want to be labeled as a rapper or a movie actor.

Riff Raff

#17. The frustrating part of being a movie actor is waiting in your trailer to do two takes of a scene you've prepared for two months.

Jesse Eisenberg

#18. A painter paints, a musician plays, a writer writes - but a movie actor waits.

Mary Astor

#19. The shelf life of a movie actor or actress is so short, it's like milk.

Graydon Carter

#20. I suspected the movies, considering her cheap crack about me being a ten-cent Clark Gable, which was ridiculous. He simpers, to begin with, and to end with no one can say I resemble a movie actor, and if they did it would be more apt to be Gary Cooper than Clark Gable.

Rex Stout

#21. As I write, the President of the United States is a former Hollywood movie actor.

Neil Postman

#22. Already liberals are trying to rewrite the history of the Cold War to remove Reagan from its core, to make him a doddering B-movie actor who happened to be standing there when the Soviet Union imploded. They have the media, the universities, the textbooks. We have ourselves. We are the witnesses.

Ann Coulter

#23. I work primarily for the camera-it's not something I really talk about a lot, but it's part of the way I am as a movie actor. The camera is my girl, as it were.

Terence Stamp

#24. 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

#25. 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

#26. 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

#27. When the script for 'The Wrestler' kept coming to me I said, This movie is so good if you put me in the film as a wrestler people are going to say, 'No credibility, Hulk Hogan isn't a good actor,' whatever Hollywood thinks of me.

Hulk Hogan

#28. 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

#29. An actor really is a kind of intermediary between an audience and the piece, whether it's a play or movie.

Christopher Walken

#30. An actor is someone who pretends to be somebody else. A movie star is somebody who pretends that somebody else is them.

Nicholas Meyer

#31. Somebody might get criticized for doing some movie that totally sucks, then turn around and be incredible. Every actor goes through that, not just musicians who act.

Lance Bass

#32. There's some kind of actors that can radically change who they are from movie to movie. I've never really been that kind of actor. I enjoy changing the worlds that I'm in.

Ethan Hawke

#33. 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

#34. It feels like I'm an actor in an Italian movie from the '60s, saying the placeholder lines into the camera, waiting for the real ones that come later.

Lauren Graham

#35. Every end of the day is a great movie and the Sun above is surely the leading actor in this film!

Mehmet Murat Ildan

#36. Cosmopolis is the movie of my life. I didn't consider myself an actor before, even if I had 10 years of acting behind me. I always felt like a fraud, and inappropriate. I doubt a lot. David Cronenberg gave me confidence in myself. He changed my way of acting and thinking in this industry.

Robert Pattinson

#37. I want to move people, stir something within them that makes them feel. That's what a movie should do and an actor should do, make you feel something. I think that's why people love films so much.

Nadine Velazquez

#38. People think, 'You're an actor, you can afford clothes,' but I just try to take the clothes from the movie, which makes the selecting of film projects that much more difficult, because you try to play characters that might wear something you'd want to wear.

Jesse Eisenberg

#39. 'One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest' is a movie that I just find flawless. Jack Nicholson ... I just saw 'The Shining' again the other day; he's so brilliant. He's such a brilliant actor, just unbelievable.

Michael Biehn

#40. As an actor, it's much easier for me to get work in the movies because nobody knows who I am except for the work that I've done in another movie. I really enjoy that.

Simon McBurney

#41. As a movie-goer, I really like to watch all different kinds of movies and, as an actor, I always feel like I could do pretty much anything but a musical.

Luke Wilson

#42. 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

#43. That's the worst thing for an actor: when you say to someone, "Yeah, I was in that movie," and they say, "You were?"

Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa

#44. I want to be the best actor that I can be; I want to be working in this business absolutely, and if that means being a movie star, then OK, that's fine. But to me, movie star, celebrity, all that stuff means something very different than being an actor.

Bryce Dallas Howard

#45. Being an actor is looked at like a prolonged game of dress-up. America puts movie stars on pedestals. In college, it's the flip side. I sometimes have to justify my job to my professors because they're focused on intellect and ideas.

Julia Stiles

#46. 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

#47. I say I'm the best actor in America who's never done a movie.

Ed O'Neill

#48. Even Arnold's adviser says he was shocked by his decision to run. I mean, his people were backstage that night and they had no idea. He totally fooled them. Who knew Arnold was that good of an actor? If he had done that in a movie, he'd have an Academy Award by now.

Jay Leno

#49. Any actor should be grateful if he's remembered for one movie in their lifetime.

Cary Elwes

#50. I think there are always actor parts, and then there are movie-star parts, and an actor's always an actor until he does a movie-star part.

Lynda Obst

#51. If I had a child actor, I would wish for it to be in an Adam Sandler movie, because he just comes in and makes them so comfortable and is so brilliant with them and they all go home and they that they've got this special relationship.

Kate Beckinsale

#52. I'm probably an actor that tends to, instead of putting things on, think about it more in terms of taking away what's not in the character, until I'm left with what is. If that makes sense. That's probably a particularly American way of working, but maybe not. The end of any movie is a readjustment.

Molly Parker

#53. I took myself out of the business to study film at NYU and the School of Visual Arts. I grew up on movie sets and was fascinated with the camera and behind-the-scenes work. I felt it would help my career as an actor if I knew all aspects of film.

Devin Ratray

#54. 'Birdman' is basically 'All About Eve' - the 1950 comedy about rehearsal rivalries in a Broadway show, and another Best Picture laureate - reimagined as a Batman suicide mission. The movie couldn't be actor-ier.

Richard Corliss

#55. Any athlete or any actor who's preparing for a long time to step on a stage or step on a field or step on a movie set, who suffers an injury right before you're getting ready to perform or to execute - it is a massive challenge that's thrown your way that you didn't expect.

Dwayne Johnson

#56. It's the same with people knowing absolutely everything there is to know about an actor. I actually think the more personal information you have about an actor, the more you have to carve out for yourself when you go to a movie and see them in it.

Holly Hunter

#57. When I go to a movie, I'm always thrilled if I've seen an actor do something and I didn't realize until the end of the movie that that was that person. I love that.

Guy Pearce

#58. My advice to any actor who's playing, quote, unquote, "extra" to think of it more like Stanislavski did. It's not a small part. You are the lead in the movie, in your own movie.

Harvey Keitel

#59. I've never done a superhero movie. It's very nice to you as an actor in several worlds to go and to experiment.

Felicity Jones

#60. I like the idea of movies having a magic element. How many times have you seen an actor in a movie who you know only as the character? It's wonderful, isn't it?

Christian Bale

#61. 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

#62. As a jobbing actor, I never get a script and go 'I can't be bothered with this.' Life doesn't work like that. For a movie star, maybe, but for a jobbing actor, that doesn't happen.

Eve Myles

#63. I am sure every movie I've made, even as an actor, had multiple test screenings. And I am sure there have been horrible things written about me. But I never have to see them!

Chris Evans

#64. I've met a lot of actors who have three dreams: You dream of making a sci-fi, you dream of making a Western and you dream of making a vampire movie. So this is one of my life-dreams as an actor coming true.

Richard Sammel

#65. It's hard to be surprised by a film. It's hard to be surprised by another actor or by a director when you've seen enough and been around. So when I am, or when I forget that I'm watching someone's movie, or when I don't know how someone made a certain turn that I didn't expect ... You know, I'm in.

Brad Pitt

#66. Every actor you learn from, take something from everyone - big actor or not. Whether they're big movie stars or not doesn't really matter.

Diane Kruger

#67. As a young actor, I booked a movie in the U.S. I didn't speak any English at the time, so I learned my lines phonetically when I auditioned for it.

Demian Bichir

#68. On one level, I would prefer never to hear the words 'James Bond' again, but on another level, it is part of my blood and my life. And it's the only movie in the world that offers a British actor the chance of international recognition.

Timothy Dalton

#69. If you want to be an actor and you love acting, you can do it whether you're doing something else or not. You can be connected with community theater or make your own little movies. But if you want to be a movie star, you've got a tough road ahead of you.

Alan Arkin

#70. Movie making is really, it's a director's medium, it's not even so much an actor's medium.

Rebecca Romijn

#71. For a found-footage-style movie, there's a definite advantage in using unknowns, because it helps sell the illusion that it's real. A known actor would get in the way of the suspension of disbelief.

Oren Peli

#72. As an actor you have to have a strong vivid imagination as you're working and when the camera's rolling, but there's certainly a part of you that is aware of real life, that you're making a movie.

John Hawkes

#73. They're making a movie about Barack and Michelle Obama's first date, called 'Southside With You,' and the producers say they've already cast someone to play young Barack Obama. Now, I'm not saying the president has aged a lot but that young actor is Morgan Freeman.

Jimmy Fallon

#74. Let me put it this way: If you're sitting in a movie and you're watching me, and you say, 'Isn't that Michael Caine a wonderful actor?' then I've failed.

Michael Caine

#75. I don't understand the actor who plays the same role from movie to movie. Maybe it's because I worked on long-running television when I was in my teens, and so the idea of playing the same role just bores me intensely. I'd rather not do it at all.

Guy Pearce

#76. You can either be a movie star or an actor. I'm an actor.

James Avery

#77. There wasn't even a movie theater in the town. Nothing. Not even any fast food chains of any kind. Regardless, I knew that I was going to leave and become an actor, and be in film and television, and I've done it.

Kristen Hager

#78. Every young male actor dreams of being James Bond in an action movie. And that's their first role. But the truth is, when it comes down to it, that's not relatable.

Brendan Dooling

#79. I have an immense amount of respect for acting. I've always loved movies and was always fascinated by movie-making. But to become an actor, I wanted to commit myself.

Dwayne Johnson

#80. I think one of the biggest things is the budget.For a studio, becomes a very big challenge to make sure that movie will work even better on every level. As an actor I don't think in those terms when I make a movie.

Famke Janssen

#81. At the end, it's your movie and your performance that stands out. So if I am a good actor, and if am being part of good entertaining engaging films, audiences will like me.

Ranbir Kapoor

#82. If anything, as a general rule, the cheaper the movie the more creative the experience, generally speaking. Its not to denigrate expensive movies. I dont want to seem biting the hands that feed me, but with big movies, especially with a lot of effects, the role of the actor is somewhat diminished.

Alfred Molina

#83. Keanu Reeves is, like, the worst actor I've ever seen. I can't believe he's a movie star.

Juliana Hatfield

#84. Use people whom you're excited by and who share your excitement ... The ideal collaboration is one in which the actor and director are saying to each other, 'I can't believe how lucky we are to be making a movie together.'

James Toback

#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. I would like Albert Brooks to have received the Oscars for best actor, best director and best screenplay for 'Modern Romance.' I love that movie.

Andy Kindler

#87. Filmmakers tell actors to adjust their body language, and the famous presence of the actor is his or her body language. That is what makes them special and a movie star. An actor's capital is his body.

Wim Wenders

#88. I didn't set out to be a villain in film. I'm a character actor, and if my first movie was a comedy, I could have played a geek just as well.

William Zabka

#89. I hope the perception is that I'm an actor, I never intended to be a movie star.

Al Pacino

#90. Denzel Washington is a big Hollywood movie star now. But he started out as an actor in the Negro Ensemble company.

Pearl Cleage

#91. Angelina wanted to make sure that any fighting in the movie would be comparable to any male actor. Everything from stick fighting to horse riding was real to her.

Jan De Bont

#92. I didn't feel like going any further in this scene with the boy. He was not a professional actor, and if I had pushed the scene any further it would have destroyed the tone of the movie.

Louis Malle

#93. I never expected to be a movie star. It's not that I didn't want to be, I didn't think about it. I wanted to be an actor.

Billy Bob Thornton

#94. Josh Radnor is that rare thing: a writer-director who thinks like an actor but still knows how to create a comedy with shape and vision. Liberal Arts is the best movie about college I've seen since I don't know what ... Dryly affectionate and super-sharp. Elizabeth Olsen is every inch a star.

Owen Gleiberman

#95. I couldn't have left my career as an actor on a better note than to have done a cameo in the Lost In Space movie. Doing this part is the highlight of my career. What a way to leave the profession!

Mark Goddard

#96. Sometimes you look at a movie and you can see that the actor or actress said, 'I'm taking this onboard because I'm making a ton of money, and not because it's going to be something special.'

Viggo Mortensen

#97. It's interesting - an actor's research is different to just historian's research. I'm looking for things that I can actually physically use in the movie.

Ioan Gruffudd

#98. I was always a singer. But I was always focused on being an actor as my trade. Music I do just for me. The movie business is very difficult but the music business is just impossible.

Jeremy Renner

#99. I just consider myself a committed actor. If a movie is a success, that's great; I'm happy for that. But I've learned just to concentrate on my job and do the best that I can.

Giovanni Ribisi

#100. I am always going to be a theater actor at heart. One of my career goals is to do "Shakespeare in the Park" someday but for now I am really excited to get working on another movie.

Michael Stahl-David