We Are Actors Quotes

#1. When audiences look at an action actor like myself, sometimes we are very easily stereotyped or characterized as one type. They forget that we are actors, too.

Donnie Yen

#2. We all think we are actors, given our scripts. But really? You're the playwright. You're the composer.

David Levithan

#3. Our life is managed from behind the scenes: we are actors in dramas that we cannot interpret. Of almost no decisive event can we say: this was our own choosing. We happen upon careers, necessity pushing, blind inclination pulling. If we stop to think we are amazed that we should be what we are.

Walter Lippmann

#4. Promotions are the worst part of making a movie. We are actors and not salesmen. Still, you have to go to so many places to try and sell the movie.

Ranbir Kapoor

#5. Here in America, every single actor, since they were little boys, they sing and dance and perform like angels. We don't do that. We are actors who work in a theater in very classic performances or plays.

Javier Camara

#6. I do believe we are actors in our own dramas, which, moment by moment, we ourselves write; that we are characters in our own fictions or those devised for us by someone or something else.

Norman Lock

#7. 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

#8. Actors are the jockeys of literature. Others supply the horses, the plays, and we simply make them run.

Ralph Richardson

#9. 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

#10. Regeneration, however it is described, is a divine activity in us, in which we are not the actors but the recipients.

Sinclair B. Ferguson

#11. Most of the time, actors respond to the thing that's so far from who they are. We all want to play the serial killer and the ex-con.

Marc Blucas

#12. Actors are not always the best judges. We have a peculiar idea of what we think we are, and sometimes it's best left to others to decide what we play.

John Hurt

#13. Mostly actors are progressive because we are accustomed to all the nuances of human life, whereas dictators just try to flatten it all out. So we usually try to stand up to dictators like, well, we won't mention names.

Jane Fonda

#14. In the great drama of existence we are audience and actors at the same time.

Niels Bohr

#15. What a costume designer does is a cross between magic and camouflage. We create the illusion of changing the actors into what they are not. We ask the public to believe that every time they see a performer on the screen, he's become a different person.

Edith Head

#16. We're actors in our lives, pretendin' to be who we want people to think we are.

Simone Elkeles

#17. I know there are actors we all want to beat up a little. I think it's important to do whatever it takes, and whatever it takes sometimes involves some physical or mental discipline. There's a lot at stake.

Ryan Reynolds

#18. Most actors are lucky to ever get a job, period. I never forget that, because I have so many actor friends in L.A., and most of us barely ever work. And those of us that do, it's still only 60 days out of the year that we're actually on camera. It's an absurdly low number.

Emile Hirsch

#19. I don't know that many Australian actors in Los Angeles, but there are a few of us. I mean, we kind of get together occasionally, but I wouldn't say it's an alliance or anything like that.

Xavier Samuel

#20. I enjoy comedic things. People don't understand it's the hardest thing to do. We have a ratio of 25-to-1 between good dramatic actors and people who are considered good comic actors.

Charles Grodin

#21. As actors, we are so privileged to do what we do and to give to the world and to choose the subject we want to say to the world.

Juliette Binoche

#22. I run Willow Management, which is the biggest agency for other short actors. We look after performers who are either under five feet and over seven feet tall.

Warwick Davis

#23. In the pre-production process, I am emailing with the actors or jumping on the phone, and we're sort of figuring out who the characters are and trying to build the relationship dynamic and things like that. Then, also, I am outlining.

Joe Swanberg

#24. I think it's always good when you're able to, as an actor, allow your work to be some kind of a conduit for social discourse, and an examination of where we are, as a society.

Zachary Quinto

#25. In Chicago it's really a case of the play's the thing - people are just so happy to be acting, you know? We were all actors - not like in New York or Los Angeles, where everyone says they are actors but they are actually waiting tables and hustling for spots in commercials.

John C. Reilly

#26. Our self discoveries make us each a microcosm of the larger pattern of history. The inertia of introspection leads toward recollection, for only through memory is the past recaptured and understood. In the fact of experiencing and making the present, we are all actors.

Terence McKenna

#27. You have a lot more leeway to be contradictory playing a character than most of the scripts have in them. That's how all actors are. We have so many different sides of ourselves and we're so different, in meeting with different people. The audiences relate more to that and find that more believable.

Joel Kinnaman

#28. What we are as actors, for better and for worse, is visible.

Scott Bakula

#29. Playwrights are the most gregarious writers - to get our work done, we need actors, directors, set designers.

Katori Hall

#30. I don't have a problem with big name actors coming into animation. It actually has been done for years and we are after all actors, it is just a different medium that requires a different technique.

Frank Welker

#31. Actors in general are pretty good bullshit artists; we're good at just chewing the fat, interacting with people. So we're good ambassadors for movies.

John C. Reilly

#32. Music and language are a vital element. We, as actors and directors, offer it to people who want to experience it. Sometimes the actual meaning is less important than the words themselves.

Kenneth Branagh

#33. I think there needs to be more care taken for the actor. You know, we are not props!

Anika Noni Rose

#34. Most dear actors, eat no onions nor garlic, for we are to utter sweet breath.

William Shakespeare

#35. Canada does a really a phenomenal job of producing music, actors, and entertainers. If you look at the number of people we have in our country relative to the number of people that are prominent in the entertainment industry, it's pretty impressive.

Stephen Amell

#36. We all are actors. The moment we step out of our comfort zones, the moment we are interacting with another, the actor in us comes alive.

Ama H. Vanniarachchy

#37. I guess actors are very sensitive people. We're porous.

Zoe Lister-Jones

#38. I'm probably my own harshest critic. If I get a hundred good reviews and one really bad one, it's that one out of a hundred that I remember. I think we actors are hard on ourselves, and I don't know why that is.

Tim Daly

#39. I like to rehearse with the actors scenes that are not in the script and will not be in the film because what we're really doing is trying to establish their character, and good acting to me is about reacting.

Jim Jarmusch

#40. The best notes are action-based and less, I don't know, heady, theoretical, because, as actors, we're too much in our heads anyway.

Josh Peck

#41. Actors are crazy or we wouldn't be doing this.

Eileen Brennan

#42. Comedic actors can be looked at as a lower form because we have to put ourselves in a lower place than most of the audience. I think lofty emotions are somehow considered more special. The best stories in the world to me are the ones that elicit a real emotion, but have humour.

Jim Carrey

#43. Jealous of the actors now, are we?" "What, of some fancy boy on the screen? Inconceivable." Oh, this was going to be good.

Ilona Andrews

#44. I don't think there are many kids who sit around and want to be actors. I don't think there are many kids who want to sit around and want to be senators. But so many of us want to be athletes, so we're envious of them and we put them up on that pedestal.

Frank Deford

#45. Ask everyone whether they're an actor or a doctor or a teacher or whatever is entitled to his or her opinion. But unfortunately, because actors are in the public eye, whether we want it or not, sometimes our opinions carry more weight or influence than they deserve.

Debra Messing

#46. We are all just actors trying to control and manage our public image, we act based on how others might see us.

Erving Goffman

#47. I don't think many actors are the best judge of careers. I think generally we have good instincts about what we can do in terms of acting. And often they become directors, which I don't want to be.

Hugh Jackman

#48. Waiters are like actors waiting in the wings, bantering whenever we passed each other on the restaurant floor, shouting at each other backstage in the kitchen and winking and corpsing above the heads of our audience, the unsuspecting customers.

Richard Eyre

#49. We read scripture in order to be refreshed in our memory and understanding of the story within which we ourselves are actors, to be reminded where it has come from and where it is going to, and hence what our own part within it ought to be.

N. T. Wright

#50. There's no big splashy renaissance in Italian films. We have good young actors and directors. What we lack are screenwriters. It's hard to write about Italy.

Valeria Golino

#51. Action is drama. If we cannot make the audience laugh, smile or cry with us, we are not actors.

Sonny Chiba

#52. When real actors are approaching their work, we could be on a little stage somewhere, doing community theater. It's all the same. They're just trying to make the scene work. They're just trying to do the best they can and figure it out.

Kurt Fuller

#53. We [actors] are so lucky to do jobs that fulfill us and make us happy. We don't go to work thinking okay, we're working to put food in the fridge. We are doing that too, but we're working because we love what we do.

Vanessa Paradis

#54. If we take as given that critical infrastructures are vulnerable to a cyber terrorist attack, then the question becomes whether there are actors with the capability and motivation to carry out such an operation.

Dorothy Denning

#55. Actors tell stories and we play different characters, and not all of them are healthy.

Andrea Roth

#56. We know that ISIL and other terrorist groups are actively encouraging people, around the world and in our country, to commit terrible acts of violence, oftentimes as lone-wolf actors.

Barack Obama

#57. In the Indian film industry, especially those of us who are in mainstream cinema, we invariably play a typical hero's role. More often than not, we cater to the public perception. However, there is a latent desire in most actors to do a role where you can go all out and experiment.

Abhishek Bachchan

#58. The maddening thing is as actors of either sex, we get better as we get older, and so when you are 65, you think, 'I could play Juliet now. I understand it.'

Joanna Lumley

#59. Just as we seldom realize that we are growing old until we are already old, so do the contemporary actors in a major social change seldom realize that society is changing until the change has already come.

James Burnham

#60. I know all actors are different, but I've never sat down and asked the writers, 'Where are we headed? Am I good or bad?'

Blair Brown

#61. This is not the 19th century, where actors are expected to play completely opposite roles. We're not typecast, but we're brought in because somebody thinks that it's a good fit, so you make it a better fit.

Kate Mulgrew

#62. Actors are excused from a lot of things, and we get away with a lot ... I find it equally interesting and exciting as it is disgusting and bizarre.

Joel Edgerton

#63. I don't believe we are accidents in the world, and I don't believe we were supposed to be actors either. I think we were supposed to be ourselves and we were meant as a miracle.

Donald Miller

#64. I know as actors our job is usually to shed our skins, but I think as people our job is to become who we really are and so I would like to salute the men and women who brave ostracism, alienation and a life lived on the margins to become who they really are.

Felicity Huffman

#65. We [black actors] are more respected in Europe, because in Europe, I'm not a black actor - I'm an action star. In America, I'm a black actor.

Fred Williamson

#66. The basis of all reasoning is the mind's awareness of itself. What we think, the external objects we perceive, are all like actors that come on and off stage. But our consciousness, the stage itself, is always present to us.

Trey Parker

#67. I've got a drought-tolerant garden; I've got a company - crazy as it sounds, we make yogurt. There are actors who have to act no matter what, but I don't want to do it just for the sake of doing it.

Rene Russo

#68. Writers and painters have a medium that can foster self-effacements. Actors haven't. An actor can't hide himself behind paper or canvas. If you're not there your art's not there. That's why we actors are often such self-centered objects.

Elizabeth Goudge

#69. Such is an actor's life. We must ride the waves of every film, barfing occasionally, yet maintain our dignity, even as the bulk of our Herculean efforts are keel-hauled before our very eyes.

Bruce Campbell

#70. I think actors, because we're in the world of the characters and the movie, are more isolated, and it always really fun to wake up and be a family with the entire crew.

Angelina Jolie

#71. We writers dream of a future where actors are mostly computer generated and their performances can be adjusted, by us, on a laptop, alone.

Tina Fey

#72. Actors are not all there when it comes to things like relationships. The thing about us is we still greatly enjoy each other. If it weren't for her support it would be hard for me to do what I am doing now.

Mark-Paul Gosselaar

#73. We're all different. Some people are musicians, some people are actors, some people are agents and some people are accountants ... We're all different.

Anthony Hopkins

#74. Writers are like actors too. For every story we create, we must get under the skin of the characters and role play with our writing.

Jyoti Arora

#75. Actors are people who are doing a job they want to do, which isn't the case for many of the people who watch what we do.

Martin Freeman

#76. We are the only school in America, drama school in America that trains actors, writers and directors side by side for three years in a master's degree program, and we want them - to expose them to everything.

James Lipton

#77. In Australia, there just weren't strong roles for actors of colour. I was often being asked to turn up for commercials with a ghetto blaster on my shoulder. I thought, 'Are we in the '60s?'

DeObia Oparei

#78. Being an actor myself I realize that all actors believe they are qualified to play any role. If you showed me a script with a black woman character I would tell you that I could do it. That is what we do. We act as if we are someone else.

Richard Masur

#79. I guess that seems like an absurd premise until we consider the possibility that the dead are always with us, beckoning from the shade, reminding us that we're actors in the same drama they have already lived and that they can help us with our lives if we will only let them.

James Lee Burke

#80. The Jews are among the aristocracy of every land; if a literature is called rich in the possession of a few classic tragedies, what shall we say to a national tragedy lasting for fifteen hundred years, in which the poets and the actors were also the heroes.

George Eliot

#81. Suddenly we find that we are no longer the actors, but the spectators

Oscar Wilde

#82. Ben and I have absolutely nothing to do with the Hollywood that's all actors and the Sunset Strip. We crave talking to people who do different things and are passionate about it.

Melissa McCarthy

#83. We had a showing of Battlestar in LA last week. I walked out the door and there were 50 people. I signed a ton of autographs. Other actors walked away without signing. These are the fans. I guess it depends. on who you are.

Noah Hathaway

#84. When we approach history, we are dealing with a conglomeration of irrational continua. Those who deal with history by nonrational processes are the ones who make history, the actors in it.

Carroll Quigley

#85. Actors are responsible to the people we play.

Philip Seymour Hoffman

#86. Perhaps teachers must be good actors where lessons are concerned, but in life outside the class, we mustn't hide from our pupils our individual spirits.

Larisa Kuznetsova

#87. There are some actors that want you to call them by their character's name and they have no relationship with you outside of the character. But I like to get to know who I'm working with so that we can relax together, and it's more fun.

Jeff Bridges

#88. Actors are like Swiss Army knives - we're ready to use any lever at any moment. But I learned long ago that, unfortunately, this industry only sees the one thing sticking out that they know us from, and that's the only thing they can imagine.

Allison Williams

#89. In the future, we'd like to support upcoming artists, people that are trying to be actors.

Evan Spiegel

#90. Because technically actors are just public servants really. They just tell stories because people need to be told stories. That's all it is. And yet we get treated as though we're important.

James McAvoy

#91. I think there is something like 90% unemployment in the Screen Actors Guild, so we are the exception.

Brent Spiner

#92. The reason the contracts are so long is because actors are very spontaneous; we may want to do Shakespeare one day and be Porky Pig the next!

Jorja Fox

#93. Back then, it was more or less we couldn't change a line in our script. We weren't allowed to change lines. Today, actors change everything and won't do parts. It's very different today. Back then, the producers were in charge. Today actors are more in charge.

Donna Douglas

#94. Let's not get too precious about it: actors are not heart surgeons or brain surgeons. We are just entertaining people.

Malcolm McDowell

#95. Actors basically are the type of person that with three seconds left, we want the ball. Give us the shot to make it or miss it. We'll take the lumps if we miss it, but we want the chance to get the glory.

Bryan Cranston

#96. We're lucky enough, especially in these 'Madagascar' films, to be working with some of the best people in the industry, who are not only great actors, but great comedians and improvisers and filmmakers. And they then become a part of creating their characters.

Eric Darnell

#97. As actors, if we are truthful to ourselves and we know what we can do and what we cannot do and just go after it, there are possibilities out there. If you don't try, you won't find out if you get them or not.

Navid Negahban

#98. If some magic thing happens, and everybody goes completely nuts, and does something we never thought of, the cameras catch everything. That comes from having camera people who are almost like actors and writers themselves.

Paul Feig

#99. Most actors are pretty adaptable because we work with so many directors.

Kyle MacLachlan

#100. When searching for harmony in life one must never forget that in the drama of existence we are ourselves both actors and spectators.

Niels Bohr