Top 100 On Acting Quotes
#1. 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
#2. Putin must be punished for violating the Budapest Memorandum, and Russia must learn that the U.S. will isolate it if it insists on acting like a rogue nation.
Rand Paul
#3. When I work on a movie, I never aim for records, collections or the number one position. I always concentrate on my work and look for ways to improve my acting abilities. I also advise my co-stars not to concentrate on these pretty issues and just focus on acting.
Mahesh Babu
#5. The pleasant surprise for me is that when I look into Tony's eyes, he's still 100% present, sharing everything that's going on. Acting with him is like a beautiful dance.
Genie Francis
#6. 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
#7. Like the Bible, Stanislavsky's basic texts on acting can be quoted to any purpose.
Lee Strasberg
#8. I won't say I've closed the door on acting.
Glen Hansard
#9. I generally don't involve myself in giving the actors some tips on acting. At the same time, I don't do that with the director.
Nicholas Sparks
#10. I'm enjoying it, but I still don't know why I'm hooked on acting.
Stephen Rea
#11. To establish yourself as an actress, you have to become well known. A girl just starting out, I would tell her to concentrate on acting, but she doesn't have to go around wearing blankets.
Jayne Mansfield
#12. My whole thing is I want to have a backup plan because maybe I won't get another acting job after 'Fame', maybe I'll want to give up on acting in five years or whatever and I want to have something else that I enjoy just as much as I enjoy acting.
Kay Panabaker
#13. I'm a bug on acting, which distinguishes Second City from a lot of other revues. It comes from the character, the behavior, and not from the jokes. I don't think jokes are funny. Humor comes out of character and out of situations the character is in.
Bernard Sahlins
#14. Actor training should be broadly humanistic, involving the study not just of dramatic literature and theatre history, but of languages, literature, and history generally, and should be centered on acting in plays rather than just exercises, improvisations, monologues, or even scenes.
Richard Hornby
#15. I'm definitely interested in doing movies. I've always focused more on acting than singing because that's where my true passion lies.
Melissa Benoist
#16. When I decided to take on acting as a career and a profession, I didn't know much about it. I knew that I was passionate about it. There was nothing else I could think of that I wanted to do and that's when I knew it was the right choice. It was also one of the scariest moments of my life.
Drew Waters
#17. I decided I was going to give up singing and concentrate on acting, and a result of that, I didn't do another film for two to three years, and I don't blame it on anybody but myself.
Bobby Darin
#18. I'll keep on acting 'til they wipe the drool. I like the business. I like to do different parts and diverse characters. I haven't lost my enthusiasm yet!
Robert Duvall
#19. When I did make the decision to focus on acting, I think my mother was just relieved for me that I had finally started to focus.
Daniel Day-Lewis
#20. He who goes on acting with energy has a (firm) will.
Lao-Tzu
#21. I've still got lots of writing in me. I have not left journalism, but I put it on hold to focus on acting. I love actors. I think it's a crazy thing to do with your life, and I have a tremendous amount of respect for them.
Liane Balaban
#22. I definitely want to go on acting for as long as I can find employment. I'm never happier than when I'm on a film set. I just want to keep working.
Daniel Radcliffe
#23. I haven't given up on acting, but I've gone away from it for a while to concentrate on myself and the fans of 'Star Wars.'
Daniel Logan
#24. I promised my mum that if something did happen to her, although I never thought anything would, I told her that I wouldn't give up on acting until I got my Oscar. This was her dream for me.
Cory Hardrict
#25. I think whatever you do, if you are going to do well or even if you don't do it well, you have to have a passion for it, and I am passionate about it. I love it. I respect it and it gets me. I get off on acting.
Jack Lemmon
#26. I became disillusioned with dance when I was 16 and started focusing on acting.
Teri Polo
#27. In an ideal world, I'd like to carry on acting, but I don't want it to interfere with my studies.
Ellie Kendrick
#28. I feel like writing songs is cheating on acting. It's weird.
Ester Dean
#29. It is rare, though becoming more common with age that I am put into situations where I only half-heartedly balance on acting and being myself...a real nice dinner, relatives, etc.
Wesley Eisold
#30. Once I realized I wanted live in New York, I saved enough money that I wouldn't have to get a job right away. That was important to me, to focus on acting; I didn't want to come here and just fall into the mix.
Christopher Abbott
#31. I had to keep on acting deaf if i wanted to hear at all.
Ken Kesey
#32. I wasn't dating anyone. I was hyper-focused on acting. So I didn't bring a guy to the prom. I was the lone gay person as far as I knew.
Randy Harrison
#33. Direct action is, ultimately, the defiant insistence on acting as if one is already free.
David Graeber
#34. Acting is a sport. On stage you must be ready to move like a tennis player on his toes. Your concentration must be keen, your reflexes sharp; your body and mind are in top gear, the chase is on. Acting is energy. In the theatre people pay to see energy.
Clive Swift
#35. 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
#36. Fashion is really interesting to me, but I'm not a professional model, so I'm focusing my career on acting.
Rinko Kikuchi
#37. I never really wanted to write and wanted to focus on acting.
Abby Elliott
#38. I'm a tough old broad from Brooklyn. I intend to go on acting until I'm ninety, and they won't need to paste my face with make-up.
Barbara Stanwyck
#39. Oh my goodness me, Daniel Day-Lewis - huge, huge fan of his. I've always loved his philosophy on acting: he always talks about returning to a state of play.
Owain Yeoman
#40. I sang a lot in college - I was in a choral group in college. But, then, when I moved to New York, I really just concentrated on acting.
Callie Thorne
#41. I actually wanted to be an exotic dancer, but that didn't work out so I thought I'd take on acting.
Sasha Alexander
#42. I make preparations both to live and to die every day, but with the emphasis on not dying, and on acting as if I was going to carry on living.
Christopher Hitchens
#43. When you're a working actor and you're happy to be one, you can't focus all your energy on acting because you will go crazy. You have to focus as much energy as you can away from yourself.
Olivia Wilde
#44. I carried on acting during school holidays and was all set to go to drama school when I was offered my first professional job appearing in 'King David' with Richard Gere.
Gina Bellman
#45. I always want to try new things, and 'Mean Machine' has given me that chance. I have got plans to carry on acting and would love to play all sorts of roles - you'll see that there's more strings to my bow!
Vinnie Jones
#46. My sights have always been on acting, on the creative process, never the lifestyle. Growing up in Northern Ireland when I did, everything was against you if you wanted to do something like that. But I was determined.
Colin Morgan
#47. On acting to daughter Isabella Rossellini: Keep it simple. Make a blank face and the music and the story will fill it in.
Ingrid Bergman
#48. There was an electric buzzing sound that was constantly on, acting as background music like a million cicadas in the forest. A constant white noise.
Missy Lyons
#49. I'm definitely focusing all of my attention on acting. Modeling comes up by default, and I love it - of course I think that it's great - but I'm definitely focusing all of my attention on acting.
Jamie Clayton
#50. 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
#51. I've spent a part of my life focused on acting, so if there was an opportunity that I'm right for and I feel confident, I would definitely go for it.
Jessie Pavelka
#52. Some people say, 'Do you have any theories on acting?' And I say, well maybe: I think you can start with zero and end with zero. You don't have to go anywhere, you don't have to go for the result.
Robert Duvall
#53. 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
#54. I could probably do a documentary on acting classes; I've taken so many.
Ahna O'Reilly
#55. Even on the worst days I am without a doubt still happier doing this than I am doing anything else. On acting.
Anna Chlumsky
#56. So that's how we go on acting dramas in our theater of the mind even when we don't believe anymore in the audience or the director or the play.
Anne Rice
#57. Everyone sort of feels alienated at that point, so it's hard to say whether I felt like that because everyone does or because I was so focused on acting [since the age of 8].
Alycia Debnam Carey
#58. When you're acting, everything is there around you, you just have to believe that it's real. When you're standing there with a slightly grey wig on and you have a baby in your arms screaming in your ear, you can go: "Well, I guess this is what it's like!"
Jim Sturgess
#59. Christians are notorious for acting like used car salesmen, treating non-Christians as if they're standing there holding a blank check and sporting a hard-on for unreliable vehicles.
Orlando Winters
#60. Actors and actresses make magic,' I said. 'They make things happen on the stage; they invent; they create.
Anne Rice
#61. Honestly, I really don't like acting. I don't enjoy it. What I do like is going to a movie theatre and seeing my face on a poster. I like seeing my name on a poster. That is cool.
Gabriel Iglesias
#62. Obviously there are times with acting when exactly what is required is just going through the motions, and when doing nothing is the best thing. But at other times, you have to make that leap beyond the immediate environment of people putting up lights on the set.
Christian Bale
#63. I don't like to spend a lot of money on haircuts: I'll sometimes grow my hair and get an acting job and get them to cut it for free. I think for a lady, though, it's okay to spend a lot on a haircut.
Paul Dano
#64. Probably the most fun I've ever had, actually, acting. Because it was the perfect extension of the stuff that I'd started to do on Late Night With David Letterman, and when I look back on all my work, it was probably the best possible incarnation of Chris Elliott, of me.
Chris Elliott
#65. An acting assistant stage manager in a theater in Canterbury, a rep theater. A small wage but just enough to get by on, and I made props and I walked on, and I changed scenery, and I realized that I just loved it.
Jeremy Irons
#66. I like working one-on-one with someone, and I think that to go to a school of acting isn't really my thing.
Stella Maeve
#67. He shot everything that moved in a blind fury. It was as if he were floating outside his body, his flesh acting on pure animal instinct. To kill or be killed. It was exhilarating.
Rebecca M. Gibson
#68. I went to Brunel University and very much wanted to go on to do a PhD in management, but then my acting career started to take off. In those days when you switched on the box there were hardly any brown or black faces.
Archie Panjabi
#69. In my experience it's not essential to get on with the person that you're acting opposite.
Hugh Dancy
#70. On some level in acting, what you're trying to find is truth, because when it's true is when it's also funny.
David Hyde Pierce
#72. Ballet has really helped me in every acting role. You have to be very disciplined, you have to be able to control your nerves and perform under pressure, and all those things you have to use in acting when you're on film or going for an audition.
Mia Wasikowska
#73. There is no safety for honest men, but by believing all possible evil of evil men, and by acting with promptitude, decision, and steadiness on that belief.
Edmund Burke
#74. Many years ago I remember a famous actress explaining to me with perfect seriousness that before making an entrance she always stood aside to allow God to go on first. I can also remember that on that particular occasion He gave a singularly uninspired performance.
Noel Coward
#75. Most of my friends all tend to work in restaurants part time, doing acting classes on the side.
Lauren Conrad
#76. Dumb luck brought on the move from business to acting. I had moved to New York when I was 23, in the year 2000. On a lark, I went to audition for a soap opera. I thought, 'Hey, this will be a really fun story to tell my grandkids one day, that I auditioned for a soap!'
Teddy Sears
#77. I'm always thinking I'm messing up. I did a lot of classes. I can't stand being on stage or the only one talking in a room, so class really helped me deal with that. It doesn't really get any easier, but it helps you focus on the acting.
Travis Fimmel
#78. In its most fundamental sense, execution is a systematic way of exposing reality and acting on it. Most companies don't face reality very well ... Realism is the heart of execution, but many organizations are full of people who are trying to avoid or shade reality. Why? It makes life uncomfortable.
Lawrence Bossidy
#79. I always think I love work, and I knew early on that I wanted to be an actress. Then I meet people who have truly dedicated their lives to acting, and I realise that I'm so completely in the back seat.
Natascha McElhone
#80. Acting requires a lot of discipline to go with the obsession. It's a path of knowledge, and of self-knowledge. Sometimes you get lost on the path. And then you find yourself again.
Toni Servillo
#81. I've always had a strange acting life. I'm the daughter of a director, and a very French, typical director who fell in love with every single one of his actresses. And that's also something that's kind of normal in the acting business, because everything is based on desire, one way or the other.
Lou Doillon
#82. I'm trying to think how I impressed my wife. We had an on-stage kiss, and I really went for it. Because I liked her. Usually you can get away with it being just technical, but it was a problem when I ended up kissing my wife on the set. I'd say I stopped acting and kissed her on set.
David Walton
#83. He is omnipresent not only virtually but also substantially. ... In him all things are contained and move, but he does not act on them nor they on him. ... He is always and everywhere. ... He is all eye, all ear, all brain, all arm, all force of sensing, of understanding, and of acting.5
James Gleick
#84. I told everyone that acting's for losers and I needed to get an education. But something kept telling me to give it one last chance. In the end, I lasted a month on the M.B.A. and then decided to quit, come back to L.A., and try again.
Judi Shekoni
#85. I've always wanted to get into acting, ever since I was younger. I'd put on shows for my family and run around play dress-up all the time. I think I was 4 when I told them I wanted to do movies.
Emma Roberts
#86. You know, acting is very fascinating. But being an actress is not, because you become so concentrated on yourself.
Beatrice Wood
#87. 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
#88. Attraction isn't wrong. People can't help who they are drawn to and they certainly can't control affinity, as uncommon as it is. What is wrong is acting on inclination if it hurts someone else, namely a significant other.
Donna Lynn Hope
#89. Acting is what I'm living and breathing on a day-to-day basis.
Ruby Rose
#90. Fighting is not internal, but it can be very spiritual. Everything acting is internal. One of my problems in making the transition is pulling back, but I'm working on it.
Roddy Piper
#91. Acting for the Indian audience is surely on my bucket list; it may take some time, though.
Pierce Brosnan
#92. When my turn on the program comes, I am not nervous at all - because all this is happening out of time, out of space. I am, for a moment, a figure of my own fantasy, and I play my appointed role as if I were in the movies.
Eva Hoffman
#93. The actual time you're acting is miniscule compared to the time you're getting ready to do the work. The big difference on series television is, there's not a lot of hanging-out time. You're pumping those pages out, you're doing six, seven, eight pages a day. And I like that pace.
Joe Mantegna
#94. Judging is acting on a limited knowledge. Learn the art of observing without evaluating.
Pushpa Rana
#96. When you turn up for work, especially with looking down the barrel of a show, you're hoping the person you're acting opposite of is going to be on your kind of crazy wavelength.
Raza Jaffrey
#97. The caviar was very high quality. I made an acting decision on the spot that Ismay was a big eater.
Jonathan Hyde
#98. The difference between acting badly or brilliantly is not based on your ability, but on the state of your mind and/or body in any given moment.
Tony Robbins
#99. Starting at age four, my mom decided that she was not going to have an idle child in the house. So I started taking dance lessons on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and then I was in acting classes on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, and I was also modeling on Saturdays. And that was my childhood.
Chandra Wilson
#100. Because Naughty Dog relies on their facial team to hand animate the faces of each game character and they do such a remarkable job, I think you can be more realistic with your acting. It gives the story and what's happening to you the feeling that it's a game.
Nolan North
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