Top 100 Quotes About Actors
#1. When I was younger, I felt very much like, 'Oh, I have to be a certain way, I have to look a certain way.' You really, really don't. That's the way women are treated differently than men. I mean, I've had actors argue with me about this.
Anne Hathaway
#2. If you're a good actor, then you channel enough of yourself into the character so that you do get that other thing.
Henry Cavill
#3. British actors are renowned for being great villains in movies, like Bond films, all the rest of it.
Luke Evans
#4. I think that's so strange, because they do know that we're all actors and we perform things that have not necessarily anything to do with us personally.
Werner Klemperer
#5. I tell young actors to do anything that will sustain them.
Vic Tayback
#7. I never understood who all those people are behind the actors! When you see them on the red carpet on TV, you go, 'Why does that person need such a large entourage?' And then you realize that every single person there has a role to play.
Lupita Nyong'o
#8. 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
#9. Every time I am reading actors I can pretty well tell which ones have studied with Meisner. It is because they are honest and simple and don't lay on complications that aren't necessary.
Arthur Miller
#10. Most actors don't really have a director's sensibility. They have an actor's sensibility.
Jodie Foster
#11. If I wasn't an actor? Hmm, I'd probably be a serial killer. I'm just so damn likeable, no one would ever suspect me.
Zach Braff
#12. As an actor myself, the opportunity to sing and dance and be dramatic and be funny - it's really irresistible to actors. You get to show all sides of your talent.
Elizabeth Banks
#13. Actors and actresses make magic,' I said. 'They make things happen on the stage; they invent; they create.
Anne Rice
#14. It's weird: making a movie is like life compacted into three months. You have these very intense relationships with people, and you talk to them every day - your editor, the casting people, music people, your actors - then it ends. It's like a circus life.
Dito Montiel
#15. [T]he question actors most often get asked is how they can bear saying the same things over and over again night after night, but God knows the answer to that is, don't we all anyway; might as well get paid for it.
Elaine Dundy
#16. Directing non-actors is difficult. Directing actors in a foreign language is even more difficult. Directing non-actors in a language that you yourself don't understand is the craziest thing you can possibly think of.
Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu
#17. I seldom meet actors, they are to me bright strange fishes swimming in an element alien to me; I feel that to meet them is to See Life.
Rose Macaulay
#18. My main goal, starting out as a young actor, was to carry the reins that Pac left off and to reach the depths as an actor that I know he would have reached had he still been here with us.
Michael K. Williams
#19. The most intoxicating thing about being an actor is to surrender to a story that you never would have come up with.
Brit Marling
#20. I grew up in a family of actors. I grew up onstage. The choice for me wasn't, 'Do I want to be an actor or not?' I always felt like that's just ingrained in you, the need to perform. The choice was, 'Do you want to do this professionally or not?'
James Badge Dale
#21. I always say that life is not easy for anybody. People hear about the young actors who have a rough life, but there are plenty of other kids who aren't actors who have a rough time, too, and I don't know if the ratio is any different.
Johnny Crawford
#22. I think of being an actor as a blue-collar profession.
Joe Mantegna
#23. You create this situation where you are so dependent on each other. That's especially true for film. In theater, the actor has much more say, much more control, for better or worse.
Susan Sarandon
#24. Auditioning for television shows - to find a guy who has a lot of experience as a laborer is a bit of an anomaly. We do exist.I know several other actors who have made their living, instead of a waitress job, framing houses or blacktopping roads.
Nick Offerman
#25. Chemistry is one of these crazy things you can't teach or learn or you can't fake. You go in hoping it will work, hope that you will connect with the other actors. I was fortunate on 'Modern Family' and 'The Procession.' They are great people, very easy to like.
Jesse Tyler Ferguson
#26. One of the greatest things I've learned, as an actor, was how to talk to actors.
Eric Balfour
#27. There are the jobs you get that do something for your confidence, like "I can do this with my life" kind of thing. And then, there are the jobs that maybe bring a certain level of awareness about you as an actor where other people feel like they can hire you.
Rosemarie DeWitt
#28. Once you're on the set and shooting, it's all just cinema. You have actors and cameras.
Philippe Falardeau
#29. It's also that comedians don't have the kind of narcissism that actors have. They're writers who perform their own material. It's more interesting. And they're sexy because they risk more. Stand-up comedians risk more than anyone.
Rachel Weisz
#30. There are some fantastic parts for older actors.
Ian McKellen
#31. Nowadays, kids ... young actors ... they go straight to L.A. before they've even done anything.
Peter Capaldi
#32. I love having played Walter because I suppose any actor brings a certain aspect of their own personality to their work, and I had a fairly broad canvas to paint on with the different versions.
John Noble
#33. Before an actor can be this or be that, the actor must simply be.
Zoe Saldana
#34. Like an actor who transforms into the character that they're playing, you can transform into yourself.
Leeza Gibbons
#35. I think with the smaller-scale projects, the burden for success falls more squarely on the shoulders of the actors and the director and the script.
Alexis Denisof
#36. It's odd, how those things happen to actors. A thing where you think, "I have no idea how to do this," something will happen in your life comes up and you just get it. I don't know how you get it, but actors are pretty extraordinary, in that regard. I think it's fear that happens.
Michael Keaton
#37. First one works alone through the mind, then before the public through experience.
Eleanora Duse
#38. There was a time when television was sort of frowned upon among people who wanted to be serious artists. John Travolta kind of exploded that. He was one of the [actors] who made that go away.
David Rasche
#39. Most actors in my position, at 47, you want your annuity show. You want your Marg Helgenberger role on 'CSI.' But that's like winning the lottery. So you try and keep yourself sane.
Julie Warner
#40. It wasn't as though I really made a commitment to it; there wasn't anything else around. So I wasn't driven to become an actor.. it just seemed to be the thing that I managed to do best.
Paul Newman
#41. When I was younger, I looked to actors like they were from another planet. You couldn't believe you could be anywhere near that world. It was exciting. I kind of like that.
Jim Sturgess
#42. You need to be as clean of a slate as you can be, as an actor. You have to try to be open to every experience.
Cillian Murphy
#44. As an actor I'm always interested in dialogue, the way the characters speak to each other. I also enjoy a bit of humor, especially when it's unexpected.
Michael Boatman
#45. Some actors don't mind it. Those who are pretty. They think it's nice to be looked at because they are nice to look at. I appreciate that. I'm very happy to salute that aspiration. But I don't like the way I look so I don't like being photographed. I become defensive.
Richard Griffiths
#46. Movie actors disappear - any young person wouldn't know Cary Grant. They're going to disappear. Fifty years ago, you thought film was here to stay. But nothing is here to stay, actually - except perhaps paintings and drawings.
David Hockney
#47. When you're starting out, you know, you have to do something on a very limited budget. You're not going to be able to have great actors, and you're most likely not going to have a great script.
Peter Jackson
#48. Just look at the messages today's media are sending everybody, from TV and commercials to actors and singers. Kids are just drowning in that 24-7 and it's getting really bad.
Evan Rachel Wood
#49. Too many actors get on an ego trip and won't do commercials, so they sit around for 20 years between jobs.
Vic Tayback
#50. I get on with actors, and when I'm doing a theatre show, it's great being with them all the time. But we're all alike, and it's much nicer being with people who are different.
Phil Daniels
#51. I'm an actor, I do movies, and I need to find somebody who enjoys that kind of stuff. It's not like, "Oh, I have my work time, and we go on a date, and it better be darn fun and exciting!" I think it should all coalesce a bit more.
James Franco
#52. I come from the theater, so for me rehearsal is vital and a way of life. There are many film directors who don't believe in it and some actors who prefer not to rehearse.
Hugh Jackman
#53. As actors, we're a little faster than other people, with breaking down the walls.
Paula Malcomson
#54. I need to work with great directors and actors, people who are better than me, so that I am challenged. It is like playing sports - surfing, basketball, it doesn't matter what it is, if you play with people who are better than you, then you get better too. It is the same thing with acting.
Paul Walker
#55. Actors are the jockeys of literature. Others supply the horses, the plays, and we simply make them run.
Ralph Richardson
#56. Warner Studios official in the era of silent movies: Who the hell wants to hear actors talk?
H.W. Brands
#57. 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
#58. Jane reminds us that God is in his heaven, the monarch on his throne and the pelvis firmly beneath the ribcage. Apparently rock and roll liberated the pelvis and it hasn't been the same since.
Emma Thompson
#59. There are many ups and downs in everyone's life and when you're an actor usually you're a very sensitive human being.
Melanie Griffith
#60. It was the fashion of the time, still is, to feel that all actors are neurotic, or they would not be actors.
Gene Tierney
#61. The camera can move, you can make the shots, blah blah blah, but as long as the actors are good, you have something.
Julie Delpy
#62. I had no idea that, when you audition for television or movies, you go to a big building - like, an office building - and you walk in the room, and everybody, I assumed, was smarter than me and better than me, and there's actors you recognize. I once fainted at an audition.
Kurt Fuller
#63. For actors in Hollywood, it's very straightforward. We're well-paid animals in a zoo.
Robin Wright
#64. Then they started pulling me in and I was very resistant. All the other actors would be saying write more, more dialogue for me, and I'd always be saying 'No, less, less'.
Peter Berg
#65. I think it's a shame when you come across young actors and musicians who haven't had the time to learn their craft. It doesn't matter if it's acting or music; you really have to learn how to do it from the bottom up because unless you have a great work ethic ... fame is a terrible thing to have.
Denis Leary
#66. I look at actors very closely. It's not an accident when the actors excel.
John Frankenheimer
#67. More and more good actors are now transmigrating into the videogame space and playing roles there because it's where my generation of kids get stories from.
Andy Serkis
#68. Any actor, any playwright who's worked a life in the theater knows how to do things cheaply and quickly. It's just all by necessity. Invention is everything.
Israel Horovitz
#69. I have had the occasion to meet child actors from the '60s and '70s at various functions, and everyone's gone on to various different lives - they're real-estate agents or surfers.
Mike Lookinland
#70. You never stop thinking about technique, but really, the reason we're actors is because of the sheer joy of those few moments you get every now and again where you're totally present. The rest is just struggle and misery.
Caitlin Fitzgerald
#71. Here's the thing about movies, all movies end up on television. That's their life. Whether you like it or not, I don't care how much money you spend on it, or how big or broad the film is, or who the actors are in it, eventually it's all coming out of the box.
Greg Kinnear
#72. Nobody enjoys being on display," said Isabel. But then she thought: Some do, and so she added, "Except actors. And narcissists.
Alexander McCall Smith
#73. I didn't know what the path was that I wanted to be as an actor, to be honest. I've been doing a lot of theater since I was a kid, so I was just sort of taking opportunities.
Guy Pearce
#74. Acting is a win-win situation. There is no risk involved. That's why I get tired of hearing actors who try to make out that there's a downside to it. Fame is an odd thing. It bugs you a little bit, but it's really not bad.
John Corbett
#75. May I just single out for salutations, on the 'anti-war' side: Pop Stars For Appeasement, Dancers Against Democracy, Actors For Apathy, Fashionistas For Fascism and Jugglers For Genocide. All of them united under that flaccid flag of convenience, Show-Offs For Saddam.
Julie Burchill
#76. I try to always motivate young kids who want to be singers or actors or whatever it is they want to be that anything is possible with hard work. It doesn't matter where you're from or what language you speak - as long as you work hard, you can achieve those goals.
Prince Royce
#77. Throughout Ireland, there's a brilliant community of filmmakers and actors, and I guess there was always a lure to do some work in the place where I come from.
Jamie Dornan
#78. I don't know if I'm embarrassed because I think it's a funny show, but I could imagine there being a snootiness about it, but I do find 'The Big Bang Theory' very funny. I think that's a good show. I think it's fun, I like the actors; I think they're all doing a great job.
Stephen Merchant
#79. I have so much empathy for these young actors that are 19 and all of a sudden they're beautiful and famous and rich. I'm like, 'Oh my God, I'd be dead.'
Philip Seymour Hoffman
#80. We ask actors to come to work ready to open a vein, to be emotionally thin-skinned. If someone screams, 'What about my coffee?' it's not about the coffee; it's because they're working in an emotional state. It ain't easy being an actor.
Don Scardino
#81. My dad is from Queens. I remember visiting as a kid. My grandparents grew up here. All the actors I respected were coming out of here. All the hip-hop I was listening to - Beastie Boys, A Tribe Called Quest, Biggie, Wu Tang - was coming out of New York. I'm just into it.
Bryan Greenberg
#82. The balance when you're catching people up, and the craft of what we do as actors, is to try to make sure that the exposition sounds like thought and dialogue, and a plan or a problem or something that is motivationally induced, rather than just telling the audience information.
Jack Coleman
#83. I have no illusions about my position in this world as an actor or anything like that. I'm very realistic. Reality is a very liberating thing.
Anthony Hopkins
#84. I don't perform well in private. Socially, I mean. And I didn't as a child. Actors aren't necessarily outgoing, are they?
Lindsay Duncan
#85. It's true I have a hard time with the notion of creating a character. And I feel it's a limit. I'm always really impressed by actors who are able to construct a character, like Johnny Depp.
Louis Garrel
#86. The theatre is not the place for the musician. When the curtain is up the music interrupts the actor, and when it is down the music interrupts the audience.
Sir Arthur Sullivan
#87. I start with actors that I know personally or I know their work, and there are things about their work or their presence or their own personality that make a character, that exaggerates some qualities and suppresses other qualities. It's always a real collaboration for me.
Jim Jarmusch
#88. If the [actors] are working, and I have a dinner engagement, I don't do 20 takes. I do five takes and go home. I want to go to dinner.
Woody Allen
#89. Do you believe that our stories were written from before that we are but actors performing on the stage called life with neither rehearsals nor retakes, the dialogues of our own and a fleeting audience or are you someone who pens down his own story?
Chirag Tulsiani
#90. I think that's who you should be servicing as an actor is the fans. You don't wanna alienate new people from coming in, but you gotta first and foremost service your fans.
Krysten Ritter
#91. I gotta make a living. I make no bones about that. Most actors do. But within that context, I've never not tried to make something as fresh and alive as I possibly could make it.
Alan Arkin
#92. As a director you come in and tell the actors how good they are.
Bryan Cranston
#93. Actors love mental disorders, dialects, and corsets. Give them one of the three and they're happy.
Robin Tunney
#94. A lot of actors find it impossible not to ask for the audience's sympathy. They have a need to twinkle.
Julian Fellowes
#95. To have a director that loves his actors is something that you can see in the film and in the fruits of that labor. You can see that translated in the film. When you watch such movie, you can see a director who loves his actors, and it shines through the movie, in my eyes.
Vin Diesel
#96. I think a lot of people want to, at some point in their life, be someone else, run away and escape, in some way. We [actors] do get to do it. We have a job that allows for that. We have an outlet for it.
Emily Blunt
#97. There are only so many hilarious actors so when they cross-pollinate, people assume it's always the same actors and directors.
Judd Apatow
#98. I was never able to analyze my own performance that way I can now. I've realized why certain actors work. I think I'm very in control of what I do in there now. I know how to listen, how to make it real and how not to go to jokes, but to go for a sense of reality.
Steve Dildarian
#99. The child has a primary need to be regarded and respected as the person he really is at any given time, and as the center - the central actor - in his own activity.
Alice Miller
#100. Actors and writers need to come back to the theater because it's a place where you can learn. You have to pay your dues, and people who haven't paid their dues in the theater, I think, have a hard time creating a whole career.
Joanne Woodward
