Quotes About Not Thinking Before Acting

#1. Personally I don't believe in bad people. I think there's always a reason for people acting badly.

Bill Skarsgard

#2. You can make yourself enthusiastic by affirming enthusiasm and by thinking, talking, acting enthusiastic.

Norman Vincent Peale

#3. I have an appreciation for what some people would call "bad acting," but which I think can be much more real than the overly emotive, technical and supposedly "realistic" acting that is so prevalent in mainstream cinema.

Bruce LaBruce

#4. Human beings, in their thinking, feeling and acting are not free agents but are as causally bound as the stars in their motion.

Albert Einstein

#5. I think everyone's journey through this crazy, weird, wild, wonderful area of work named acting is really their own. And if you're going for something that isn't yours, you're wasting time. You could be focused on your own work instead of thinking about somebody else.

Laura Linney

#6. While some of us act without thinking, too many of us think without acting.

Dan Millman

#7. I actually think that craft service was the reason I got into acting: the free food. I literally remember on my first job being like, "Yes! I get to have craft service every day!"

Blake Lively

#8. Sometimes I think it's so good not to win those things. And, anyway, who wants to peak when they're 28?

Cate Blanchett

#9. You must allow yourself to start thinking BIGGER and acting BOLDER with regards to what's possible for you. Seriously. Don't wait. Start now.

Hal Elrod

#10. That fundamentally undermines your ability to access the best part of your instincts. So my advice to those people would be stop thinking and introspecting so much and do a little more acting.

Malcolm Gladwell

#11. I always loved acting, but it's weird to think what I'd be doing if this hadn't come around. It's kind of a bit of a fluke how I got into it, so I'm grateful.

Rupert Grint

#12. Hold your Council before Dinner; the full Belly hates Thinking as well as Acting.

Benjamin Franklin

#13. Thinking well is integral to acting righteously. Truth and spirituality are of a piece: to know the truth is to do it. There is no dichotomy between the two. To be spiritual is to know/do the truth.

James W. Sire

#14. The less acting you have to do, the better, I think.

Paul Dano

#15. Our vibration depends upon what we are thinking, feeling and acting. You have two choices, one is to flow with the chaotic frequencies of the world and feel hopeless, or decide what and how you want to feel.

Hina Hashmi

#16. I have mainly been interested in acting. I think it's a great job, a fine way to live your life.

Jack Nicholson

#17. Since life requires a specific course of action, any other course will destroy it. A being who does not hold his own life as the motive and goal of his actions, is acting on the motive and standard of death.

Ayn Rand

#18. People are basically good, and when they are in possession of the full truth, they usually do the right things.

Bryant McGill

#19. Some people are good at performing in front of people like that, but I'm uncomfortable at it. I think maybe that's the difference between acting and being a performer. I don't think I'm a natural performer.

Kristen Stewart

#20. It kind of varies. I don't have a method yet. It depends on the script and the character I think I need. I've worked with acting coaches, researched roles, and channeled different parts of myself. It's on a case-by-case for me, right now.

Zoe Kravitz

#21. As always, with acting, you can't be too self-conscious. You shouldn't care about what people are thinking about you at the time because they're not caring about you, they're caring about the character.

Freddie Highmore

#22. Therefore: In dwelling, choose modest quarters, in thinking, value stillness, in dealing with others, be kind, in choosing words, be sincere, in leading, be just, in working, be competent, in acting, choose the correct timing. Follow these words and there will be no error.

Laozi

#23. I think of myself as a singer. The acting is just something I have to do between songs.

Deanna Durbin

#24. Unexpressed good thoughts aren't worth squat!

Kenneth H. Blanchard

#25. You know, at this point, my focus still is acting, but I think at some point in time, I definitely want to do some directing, I'm just not sure when. But it's not on my plate big-time right now, just because I'm busy, and I'm having such a great time.

Jackie Earle Haley

#26. A warrior of the Light is never in a hurry.
Time works in his favor; he learns to master his impatience and avoids acting without thinking.

Paulo Coelho

#27. I certainly think that when I flick through all the magazines at the hairdresser's I like to see and am drawn to images that have an intelligence and mind at work behind them.

Cate Blanchett

#28. I think acting has made me very in tune with human behavior and myself as well.

Scoot McNairy

#29. I don't think of myself as a star. An actress is nothing remarkable.

Gong Li

#30. I won't even think about acting in a role where I didn't do a back story for a character.

Quentin Tarantino

#31. Actors are always weird about acting with their spouse or their boyfriend or girlfriend, but more because they think audiences will find it boring.

Rosemarie DeWitt

#32. The point is to explore whatever may be helpful for thinking, understanding, and acting responsibly over long periods of time.

Stewart Brand

#33. You think about acting kind of as an iceberg where you've got that 5% that you see ... but in order to have that 5% ... you have to have another 95%.

Jonathan Tucker

#34. Hugh Grant, who several times has announced that he was thinking of retiring from acting, has said that he suffers from panic attacks when the cameras start rolling.

Scott Stossel

#35. I think it almost all has to do with coming at writing from an acting perspective, because I didn't, like, study writing. I studied acting.

Quentin Tarantino

#36. If you accentuate yourself, thinking or acting like you are important, then you must want to look good to someone in this world. In order to impress or sway anybody in this world, you have to be in this world yourself.

Frederick Lenz

#37. With film acting, and often when the camera comes very close, you just have to think about something and the camera will pick it up.

Ruth Wilson

#38. Acting is really important to me, so I think it would be really hard for me to do something I didn't believe in.

Maggie Gyllenhaal

#39. When I first moved out to Los Angeles I was thinking, you know, I wanted to be an actor but I didn't really know what acting was about. I thought if I could be a model, or even do commercials and stuff like that for the rest of my life, I'd be happy.

Michael Biehn

#40. I am sure that there is a lot more going on in the objective real world than we can monitor with our five senses. I think dreams allow us to engage with the real world and monitor the way it is acting on us.

Amy Hardie

#41. It isn't enough to think outside the box. Thinking is passive. Get used to acting outside the box.

Tim Ferriss

#42. I think acting is totally conducive to being a little kid, because kids are less inhibited and use their imagination.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt

#43. Sometimes acting and politics make a very bad combination. I think that sometimes people take me less seriously in my work for the UN because I am an actor.

Angelina Jolie

#44. I think great acting is about inhabiting a skin and transforming yourself.

David Ayer

#45. Difference thinking' is more than the ability to connect the dots, though. It's about seeing the truth, recognising the opportunity in that truth and then acting on it. You need to learn how to see the dots and understand the significance of connecting them before you can begin.

Bernadette Jiwa

#46. Writing a story is pretty all-consuming for me - it feels a lot like method acting, and for the eight or twelve or fifteen months that I'm working on a story, I'm constantly thinking about how my narrator would react to whatever tangled situation I'm in.

Molly Antopol

#47. An addict is an addict. If they're not acting out in one area, it tends to come out in another. I think there was a time when I considered myself a work addict, but that's no longer accurate.

Edie Falco

#48. I think there's such a thing, as a performance gene. If it's in your DNA it needs to come out. For me it originally came out through music, then segued into acting and came out through there. I always needed to get up and perform.

Cillian Murphy

#49. If I wasn't acting, I think I would like to do interior design. Yeah, because you know, with the Balinese background, and being there and buying furniture, stuff like that. I love to do-up our home, so I would be an interior decorator, for sure.

Melissa George

#50. I really like acting but, just now, the more I read a script I find myself thinking I'd like to direct rather than act.

Billy Boyd

#51. Music is something I do full-time in real life. I was doing music long before I was even thinking about acting.

Keith Stanfield

#52. Humility in this business [acting] isn't just a matter of being polite, it's kind of a matter of survival. You can't ever afford to think that you're the bee's knees, because you could always afford to be better. You have to always be searching for something better.

Michael Shannon

#53. One of the things that is interesting about reading conspiracy theory is that much of what folks think is conspiracy is really many people acting in concert to make or protect their money.

Catherine Austin Fitts

#54. The first rule of survival is: Make your own rules. The hell anyone thinks about the way you're acting; listen only to yourself.

Joan Rivers

#55. You cannot think your way into a new way of acting, but you can act your way into a new way of thinking.

Chuck C.

#56. I'm kind of thinking that I might start trying to do some acting. I really enjoy role play.

Santigold

#57. I find it so all-encompassing when acting that there's no room for anything else when you're in it; you're just locked into thinking about it all day, you go to sleep with it, wake up with it, and when I come back, I really need time to recover.

Sophie Okonedo

#58. Always obey your parents. When they are present. This is the best policy in the long run. Because if you don't, they will make you. Most parents think they know better than you do, and you can generally make more by humoring that superstition than you can by acting on your own better judgment.

Mark Twain

#59. When people say things like "don't let this moment pass without acting on gun control," what they're really saying is our arguments are so unpersuasive that they can only succeed when people aren't thinking clearly.

Glenn Reynolds

#60. 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

#61. It's always better just to do work that you're really proud of and work that you enjoy because really all you have are the choices you make and that's it and who knows after that. I think that's what I love in acting.

Emily Blunt

#62. My problem with the traditional acting method was that I never understood what you were supposed to be thinking about when you're onstage.

Tina Fey

#63. I think it's almost better to start [acting] at a later age because you have more stuff to drawm from - more life experience. When you start too young, you grow up on a set.

Josh Duhamel

#64. Margot is very kind and would like me to confide in her, but I can't tell her everything. She takes me too seriously, far too seriously, and spends a lot of time thinking about her loony sister, looking at me closely whenever I open my mouth and wondering, Is she acting, or does she really mean it?

Anne Frank

#65. What I love about photography, and it's the same thing I love about acting, really, is that it forces you, like, right into the moment, where you can't be distracted, where you can't be, like, thinking about other things or ahead of yourself or behind yourself.

Jessica Lange

#66. So don't come in here acting like you matter. You left and took your high horse with you," he takes another step in my direction. My throat constricts.
He's not finished, "And you show up here at my club thinking you can just waltz right in and have a say? No bitch.

Bink Cummings

#67. I always thought I would be a marine biologist because I love the sea - but considering the fact that I've always loved acting and the theater, I don't think I ever gave anything else much of a chance.

Renee O'Connor

#68. What used to frustrate me going into an audition was that some inexperienced, lesser casting people would think that actors are acting only when they're speaking.

Bryan Cranston

#69. Acting is primarily is where I want to go. But seeing how the visual effects guys work, and the special effects guys and the art department guys, how they work and seeing their visions is really interesting. I don't think those guys get the recognition they deserve.

James Phelps

#70. Acting was always a part and faucet of my life. It just comes very natural. I think it's a good thing.

Nicki Minaj

#71. I like acting too much and it's too, I'm just too busy doing that and I'm too hungry for it, to get behind the camera. I mean, unless I could act in it, too. I don't think I've got the right brain. I'm too disorganized.

Rachel Weisz

#72. Ultimately, everyone is acting out of what they feel is the best choice. In a way, they're all trying to improve the world. And I think that those basic choices make the world a better place.

Chuck Palahniuk

#73. 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

#74. I think acting for sure takes a lot of dedication, especially when you're starting out, because it's so much rejection and it's so important to really study and know your craft.

Bitsie Tulloch

#75. I'm always open to somebody else having a better idea, but I feel like, if it feels real, then people aren't thinking about it and they're just doing the acting of it.

Anne Fletcher

#76. you don't think yourself into a new way of acting, you act yourself into a new way of thinking.

David Robertson

#77. It takes so long to write a script, thinking to yourself, "Am I wasting my time? Am I putting everything into this thing that maybe just won't ever exist?" I always think, God, acting is so much easier. At least for acting you have the source material already.

Jason Schwartzman

#78. I've only been acting since 2009 and I learn more and more with each job. I think I prepare and I'm very focused and I have a good work ethic that I learned in school.

Jenny Slate

#79. I'm 35 but because I've been acting professionally playing women since I was eighteen years old - I never played a teenager - people constantly think I'm like ten years older than I am, which is a little hard on my ego.

Laura Benanti

#80. Somebody once said that you can never act and be another person; you're only acting facets of yourself. I think there's a lot of truth in that.

Nathan Fillion

#81. I think directors should at least take acting lessons to see what's going on. And I think all actors should direct to see what a director has to go through.

Penny Marshall

#82. I've been to acting school and I think that at the end of the day, when you just focus on the work and you're comfortable with who you are, that at some point someone's going to recognize your talent and give you an opportunity.

Viola Davis

#83. When I'm acting, I just want to be the character and not have to think of any film technicalities.

Denzel Whitaker

#84. I've dealt with a few method actors, and I don't know if should say this, but I think it's a bunch of nonsense. I think it's film acting and you just have to be on when the camera is rolling.

Natalie Portman

#85. My thinking is lot more different with many actresses in the industry. I don't understand why people in showbiz put their profession of acting in the back seat after marriage.

Kareena Kapoor Khan

#86. I certainly very much enjoy acting, but I am open to anything really. I think it's important when you have those moments in life when you are not attached to something, and you are not quite sure what the next phase of your journey is going to look like, that you don't pigeon-hole yourself.

James Scott

#87. Quotes are a way of acting out not just a text, and not just thinking, but the making of a text. The construction of thinking.

Masha Tupitsyn

#88. I don't concern myself with thinking ahead to the finished product. I focus more specifically on what the character is experiencing. Once you relieve yourself of the very arbitrary and always punishing pressure of what an audience is expecting you to do, acting becomes a lot more fun and pure.

Jesse Eisenberg

#89. That is what we have been feinting towards for a year of our lives: pretending like it was going to happen, acting like it was going to happen, and making you think it was going to happen. I like to work from the back forward.

David Mandel

#90. The important thing in acting is to be able to laugh and cry. If I have to cry, I think of my sex life. If I have to laugh, I think of my sex life.

Glenda Jackson

#91. I'm used to American actors who have a movie career thinking television acting is beneath them.

Alan Ball

#92. Nobody would ever think, "Oh, get into acting so you can live the straight and narrow path," but it gave me a sense of discipline and focus.

Juliette Lewis

#93. I don't think my acting was ever bad; I always knew that I could do it. But when you go to audition for a drama, they're very serious in the room, and I was used to being kind of goofy and having small talk.

Mary Lynn Rajskub

#94. You can't expect to draw people into your life who are kind, confident, and generous if you're thinking and acting in cruel, weak, and selfish ways. You must be what it is that you're seeking- that is, you need to put forth what you want to attract.

Wayne Dyer

#95. I think you're an acting teacher in disguise You're so incredibly intuitive and always passionate and always driven to go further. I never had to worry. All I had to do was look at you, babe.

Chad Coleman

#96. I think acting is magic. If I tell you all about myself it will spoil it

Patrick Troughton

#97. I was trying to be the best rapper in the world. I wasn't thinking about acting.

Ice Cube

#98. Acting is not a science. Anybody who believes that their success exists in relation to their goals is deluding themselves; unless you think of a career in terms of financial goals. I have nothing against Tom Cruise, but he must have a large capacity to deal with the business side of movies.

Val Kilmer

#99. I can only live my life in this way. I don't think I would be living it a different way if I wasn't acting.

Dakota Fanning

#100. Surely, 'tis one step towards acting well, to think worthily of our nature; and as in common life, the way to make a man honest, is, to suppose him soso here, to set some value upon ourselves, enables us to support the characterof generosity and virtue.

Laurence Sterne