Top 100 Quotes About Acting
#1. Acting, and the privilege of being able to do it for a living, is so important to me. I don't turn up and just hope for the best. I really fret about it. I do my homework; I prepare myself for the experience of playing a particular character.
Kate Winslet
#2. I've had a lazy career. Sometimes one film a year, sometimes none. I'm walking around in the street and doing this other thing, living, that I'm much more interested in. I just do some acting on the side.
James Spader
#3. I do love acting. But to work as a photojournalist would have been extraordinary.
Jessica Lange
#4. From the time I was 16 to really up until turning 21, the roles were really, really few and far between. I had people say that I just wasn't a good singer. They didn't know what to do with me; I would never fit in any markets. I almost quit acting altogether.
Naya Rivera
#5. I never plan to stop acting, I take it very seriously.
Drake
#6. Even when I was a teen model, I didn't think it was fair that I had to enter the acting world to get insurance.
Tyra Banks
#7. Acting was just outside of the realm of possibility for me. I grew up in L.A. and around Hollywood but I literally never, honestly, considered it.
Cody Horn
#9. I've had weird, weird acting jobs. Low-budget filmmaking where you find yourself in really bizarre places.
Gillian Jacobs
#10. I don't get acting jobs because of my looks.
W. H. Auden
#11. I started as a musician. I play the saxophone, but from the age of 17, I realised that it's very hard to make a living as a jazz musician in Australia. So I went for an audition and got an acting job and, fortunately, I completely fell in love with that.
John Polson
#12. I don't like it when people are trying too hard. That goes for clothes, for acting, for everything. It's just not good when it seems like you're making too much of an effort.
Clive Owen
#13. 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
#14. I think breathing is actually the key to a lot of opening up of other parts of yourself that you haven't used, for any job, but particularly in acting.
Sigourney Weaver
#15. We, in the late '60s, '70s and '80s, are acting like we have just discovered freedom and liberation. But I'm sure that many women have worked for that for such a long time.
Angeles Mastretta
#16. Violence within the context of policing has a sense of control and power to it, whether it is dominance, getting what you want, or acting out of emotion. At the same time, it is not ultimately satisfying and [you are] trapped in the cycle.
Keanu Reeves
#17. This to me is the secret comedy of all author interviews, down through the ages, even the good ones in the 'Paris Review' and places. They're all acting. It's like watching a person in a play.
John Jeremiah Sullivan
#18. You know, the great thing about acting or, indeed, filmmaking in general, is that we're all given a reason to do research. You kind of have to, really, if you want to know what you're doing, but it opens up this whole new understanding.
Danny Huston
#19. Acting in films hasn't changed me. I feel exactly the same.
Shelley Duvall
#20. I started working on stage as a dancer when I was four; by 14 or 15, I knew I wanted to study the craft of acting.
Cush Jumbo
#21. I stay healthy - I mean, I've got a sports background and an athletic background. I was in competitive sports since the age of five. I was a personal trainer before I was an actor and a personal trainer for the first few years while I was acting and getting my thesis.
Neil Jackson
#22. I will always be an actress. I couldn't see myself without acting. But I'd love to direct and keep writing. I don't think one has to be in place of the other.
Kate Del Castillo
#23. Kai, are you sure you're OK? You're acting a little weird.'
He kissed me on the forehead. 'Ah, Jemima! Weirdness is one of my many charms.' Then he grabbed me in a bear hug and squeezed so hard I thought I might pass out.
Cat Clarke
#24. Faith is knowing who God is and acting accordingly ... God fights when we move.
Steven Furtick
#25. It was difficult when I was very young because I was so separated from my family. When I was at school or acting in a play, I felt very much part of something, and then it would always change, and I would be by myself.
Kim Cattrall
#26. The fashion industry is completely different from the acting industry, but definitely the same as well, because there's cattiness and competition just like in the modeling world.
Sara Paxton
#27. 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
#28. The show was number one in the ratings, Gordon Russell was our head writer, the story lines were magnificent and the acting most exciting. I loved working with Judith Light and all the other actors on the show at that time.
Michael Storm
#29. For me acting is a passion and an art, and always will only be that. I don't have any rules when it comes to acting. I'll do anything. But it depends on the script. Either I'll have passion for the project or I won't. It's got to fuel me.
Shailene Woodley
#30. If I was working nine to five, acting would be my hobby ... I always feel like maybe I should do an Open University degree. But I'm never going to.
Claire Foy
#31. Be where the acting is. I live in Houston. Dallas is 4 1/2 hours away. I let them know there's no difference.
Vic Mignogna
#32. I find that the acting's getting easier - with experience, everything is more instinctual.
Ewan McGregor
#33. Music is, for me, a great tool of a filmmaker, the same way cinematography, the acting, editing, post-production, the costumes are. You know, to help you tell a story.
Spike Lee
#34. The most exciting acting tends to happen in roles you never thought you could play.
John Lithgow
#35. At school there was no acting to be had other than school plays which I did now and again.
Ewan McGregor
#36. I had no one else to call. Nobody needed me. I had constructed my life to make certain of it. I'd remained aloof in acting class, been too cool to give my phone number to people I met on the set. I hadn't wanted the complications of being nice.
Petrea Burchard
#37. Feeling extremely foolish, the acting representative of Homo sapiens watched his First Contact stride away across the Raman plain, totally indifferent to his presence.
Arthur C. Clarke
#38. Losing my father at a tender age was hard, and I felt it more so while growing up when I needed a father to talk to. Especially while pursuing an acting career where I would have loved his guidance and advice, since it was his passion as well.
Ajay Mehta
#39. Acting is a smaller piece in a big puzzle. There are charity things I want to immerse myself in and want to have the time to go and give back to people who don't have the opportunities I have. It's a very important thing to me.
Ashley Greene
#40. I really enjoy singing and I really enjoy acting, but singing I've been doing since I was really young.
Lindsay Lohan
#41. You can get things out of acting with someone a second time around that you don't necessarily get the first time because you're more familiar, more comfortable.
Rosamund Pike
#42. The reason why people are huge stars is nothing to do with acting. It's the magic. Charisma is a word that's used too often; it's something special, and it's what makes stars. It's luck, and basically, it's genes.
Shirley Eaton
#43. Because of my background in theater and radio acting, I knew that I could make a living as an actor.
Casey Kasem
#44. A lot of times, you get into it with your significant other, and you feel like, 'Oh my God, you are acting crazy.' I've heard that before - I'm sure a lot of us have!
Sevyn Streeter
#45. Acting has always been such escapism for me.
Kelly Reilly
#46. Comedy, it's a way for me to keep my acting chops. It's like a free acting class, to get up in front of a live audience. You get to have fun telling stories.
Gabrielle Dennis
#47. Perhaps I lost sight of my dreams when I became an adult and resigned myself to acting the way adults were supposed to act.
Robin S. Sharma
#48. Acting may be how I've made my living, but music has always been my passion.
John Corbett
#49. Acting is just common sense. It isn't hard if you put yourself aside and just do what the writer wrote.
James Garner
#51. [T]he more one is conscious of one's political bias, the more chance one has of acting politically without sacrificing one's aesthetic and intellectual integrity.
George Orwell
#52. I'll still try to nail acting jobs, but with 'Eastbound,' creating it is what gives me the ultimate pleasure at the end of the day.
Danny McBride
#53. First acting gig was playing a victim in 'America's Most Wanted.' The night the show aired, they caught the killer!
Zoe McLellan
#54. In acting, I always try to go back to what would actually be the real situation, the real human behavior in life.
Robert De Niro
#55. I can relax in L.A. I think I'm the only person in that town who doesn't want to act. I was an OK singer. I was an OK dancer. But acting? Never could do it.
Victoria Beckham
#56. By the time I entered high school, I had forsaken academics altogether in favor of my burgeoning acting career.
Michael J. Fox
#57. I had my life Monday through Friday in school, and then I had my 'real life,' which was my acting class on Saturday.
Gillian Jacobs
#58. I adore not being me. I'm not very good at being me. That's why I adore acting so much.
Deborah Kerr
#59. I've always loved projects where I can combine acting and music.
Natalia Tena
#60. For me, personality acting is not that interesting. I don't want to just be myself.
Lesley Manville
#61. But then acting is all about faking. We're all very good at faking things that we have no competence with.
John Cleese
#62. Acting is a sort of pressure cooker that allows the fizz to come out the top. God knows what I'd be like if I didn't have that.
Andy Serkis
#63. If you keep acting like a big baby, I will shoot you. I've never known a man so in love with his hair before. "
"I'm in love with all of me. I'm a very lovable pervert."
"Well, you're going to be a very sexy pervert when I'm done with you. Now hold still.
Tiffany Reisz
#64. 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
#66. Remember, acting is not a business of glamour. It is science, craft and an art. Read about acting; don't do it for the sake of fun. Actors such as Paresh Rawal and Naseeruddin Shah are great examples; they are surviving only because they have read well.
Boman Irani
#68. All these fifty-year-old guys wearing baseball caps and shorts and acting like children. It winds me up. Men don't have to take responsibility anymore. Most of the guys I know would punch me on the nose for saying this, but maybe we do have to bring back conscription.
Chrissie Hynde
#69. When instead of acting against a situation, you merge with it, the solution arises out of the situation itself.
Eckhart Tolle
#70. When I'm acting, it's like I am the character - no one can talk to me. But I'm not so method I'd sell my house and live on the street to play a tramp.
Tom Holland
#71. But it's healthy - whatever you can do to keep you fresh and awake. Acting's such a ridiculous job and sometimes you need to look at it like that to get a sort of degree of freshness.
Eric Bana
#72. That particular take was the one that ended up in the film. So when you see Westley fall to the ground and pass out, that's not acting. That's an overzealous actor actually losing consciousness.
Cary Elwes
#75. When I was in high school, I had already kind of been working in the industry and had done a couple of acting jobs. There were definitely some girls that were either jealous or thought I was a snob. I was just trying to be a teenage girl and go to high school and have fun like everybody else!
Jillian Rose Reed
#76. I kind of fell backwards into acting. I was studying to be a high school teacher. I look now and I understand completely, or actually barely, how much work it is to be a teacher. It's an incredible amount of work.
Nathan Fillion
#77. My theory is that everything an actor does, from the way he looks at his watch to the way he moves across the stage, is in the service of advancing a story, and in that sense, it's all writing. In that sense we, while acting, write.
Bernard Sahlins
#78. I like acting when I can pick my own roles, and I do. It's fun. I like being creative, and it's a creative process.
Art Alexakis
#80. Acting is kind of difficult to intellectualize - it's a far more visceral experience. It's really hard to be able to think about and then employ these kind of esoteric notions of this person's backstory and try to weave it in somehow. It's just kind of impossible.
Jesse Eisenberg
#81. The secret to acting is don't act. Be you, with add-ons.
Michael Sheen
#82. You know what black hatred women feel toward me as soon as they see me, until I return inside my shell, they use every possible weapon. As soon as a generous man tries to help me out, a woman is here to hold his arm and prevent him from acting.
Camille Claudel
#83. When I first started acting, I had all these ideals about the kinds of roles I wanted to play, but the reality is that when you do television - and I do a lot of television - you get cast for qualities that you have as a person. So I look for qualities that I like to portray.
Erin Gray
#84. I got an M.F.A. in acting from NYU, and part of our training is to learn how to use swords in combat situations in a performance and Shakespeare plays where you have to fight.
Danai Gurira
#85. I'm always a people watcher. They always had us do that at the University of Connecticut where I went for my training. I got my B.F.A. in Acting there.
Austin Stowell
#86. Movie acting is primarily listening. If you're really engaged, that's all a movie audience wants to see is you processing what's happening in your world.
Richard Gere
#87. Acting with someone else, I can't tell how good they are because if I'm doing my job right, I'm just fully invested in everything that person's saying.
Matt McGorry
#89. Acting in TV as opposed to films is really difficult. What a film gets two months to do, we get eight days to do.
Michelle Borth
#90. I am a proud participant of the Spencer Tracy School of Acting: Know your lines, don't bump into the furniture.
Danny Bonaduce
#91. That place that no one knows about - horrifying things we keep secret. A lot of that is released through acting.
Charles Durning
#92. I don't think acting is addictive. If I stopped acting tomorrow, I really wouldn't care. If you told me that I would have to sell real estate in New York City to look after my family, that would be fine with me.
Alec Baldwin
#93. The essence of acting is seeing the world from another point of view. That's what acting is.
Sydney Pollack
#94. I think I had a shyness about me, I think I discovered acting as a way to break out of that and as a way of belonging, a sense of being special.
Michael C. Hall
#95. If you look good, you can act in a Bollywood movie, you don't have to be able to act; and Aishwarya Rai is a great example of this. She is a beautiful woman ... You look at her, I want to look at her. Damn, she is fine; but stop acting or stop trying to act.
Russell Peters
#96. When I went to acting school, the kids that got the best grades were the kids that could cry on cue. But it didn't really translate into careers for any of them, because the external is the easy part.
Albert Brooks
#97. Playing normal-looking characters really intimidatesme. I got into acting to play anyone but me.
Billy Bob Thornton
#98. Acting isn't that hard, really. I mean, I think that people make a big deal about it, but you just kind of try to say your lines naturally.
Ryan Gosling
#99. A lot of talent is a gift, but a lot is also luck. I'm very aware of that. I was born in the right place at the right time. I am also blessed because I've never been a sex symbol. I'm spared the embarrassment of acting young.
Paul Simon
#100. I don't even like the show that much, I mean, it's about doctors. It's not like doctors are as important as actors anyway, I bet I've saved more lives with my acting talent then any doctor has.
Zach Braff
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