Acting Quotations | Page 7

When I was first starting out, if you were acting on television, it was a real stigma.

I did some theater as a kid for fun. But it was really by chance that I landed into acting.

The basic answer is that I wasn't happy or fulfilled by the job I had and I wanted my life to mean something to me, so I searched my life experience and realized that acting and performing were activities that I enjoyed all aspects of.

Other acting opportunities had come along, but nothing that was tantalizing enough to me to step away from what I found most interesting.

I wasn't really serious about acting - I was serious about baseball

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 Im so completely in the back seat.

A lot of the time I hate acting. It has a lot to do with the way I was brought up in a world where showing your emotions is frowned upon. It's just not manly. I don't do anything in life because I love doing it. It's because I want to be good at it.

If laws acting upon private interests can not always be avoided, they should be confined within the narrowest limits, and left wherever possible to the legislatures of the States.

My belief about acting in one foot on a banana peel and the other one in the grave.

Film acting is one of the only industries where you're criticized for working hard. In any other industry, it's considered a quality and something to behold.

And I've been lucky in that I haven't had another job besides acting in the last five years.

I always wanted to perform in some capacity since I was a kid - I was a ballerina, then a singer before acting.

As you grow in this business, you learn how to do more with less.

I hope to continue building my acting career and work more on projects that fulfill my artistic thirst.

Acting coaches in Hollywood were always telling me to use my hands and body more. But that was never me. I just breathe and sometimes it doesn't look as if I'm doing that.

In many ways, acting is really like a science to me to figure out the human behavior of any character that I'm playing.

I am only an actress when they say, 'action' and I stop being an actress when they say, 'cut'. I am a normal person outside of acting.

There is a part of me that is not fulfilled by acting. It is a self-involved life; it can feel shallow, but not very often.

I think for comedians, acting is their natural progression. It's all about progression.

Good acting is good acting, however you learn it. Some people who haven't studied are amazing. Some people like Leonardo DiCaprio are naturally gifted - he's learned technique by working with people early on.

Acting is never done. We're trying to keep it real and make sure that you're entertained and it seems unrehearsed.

Acting is fun and I refuse to get involved in the semantics and the politics of strategy and breaking out of something or doing something because you need to do something else. For me it's all about what fuels my soul and if I'm passionate about a screenplay then that's what I'll do next.

The minute I get a big head and start acting like the big man on campus, it's all downhill from there.

Instead of acting in court, I decided to act onstage.

When you're acting, you're escaping and hiding behind something. It's cliched to say, but there's a safety there.

When I was acting, I got trained in creating a character as a three-dimensional person. If you're doing it right you should be able to draw an audience into the character's world and make them feel their fears.

I like acting better than anything else, but, you know, directing's good.

A dream acting role would be Matt Damon in the Bourne series. I would love to do something like that!

I think that Brad Pitt is definitely a hottie. And his acting is so great that it makes him even more sexy.

Acting is not my favourite thing. I don't like wearing costumes and wigs.

Acting is reacting. You can't react if you're not paying attention, if you're not listening.

I can disappear into things very easily. But with acting, you have to be in the moment, and it gives me this incredibly fulfilling emotion: being really present.

I love acting, and it was really important to me to give it a real shot.

I regard the theatre as the greatest of all art forms, the most immediate way in which a human being can share with another the sense of what it is to be a human being.

Acting is seductive. It looks so much fun. I did dally with other things. I did pupillage in a law firm, but I didn't like the look of how many files the lawyer I was working with had to take home every night. It looked like a hideous amount of work, when actors were having nice lunches and discussing books.

I have recently started acting lessons in south France, and I intend to commence acting lessons at Rada.

Acting touches nerves you have absolutely no control over.

If you want to be an actor and you love acting, you can do it whether you're doing something else or not. You can be connected with community theater or make your own little movies. But, if you want to be a movie star, you've got a tough road ahead of you.

It's upsetting that it is such a big deal. I wish it weren't an issue all the time. It's funny that people say it's a departure, because I've been acting since I was a child. I've played three gay roles out of hundreds.

One of the most precious parts of acting is the work before you show up on the set, the time you spend being with your character before you bring that character to life. To me, that's the most rewarding part of it all. It feels very good to show up on a set just knowing that's with you.

I was always interested in the arts as a child - drawing, painting, and piano - but acting became a favourite. I was a major theatre geek in high school - if I wasn't in the drama room at lunch rehearsing, I'd be in the art room finishing up some type of project.

The reason I like doing these acting projects is because no matter how much acting I do, I'll always have music in my life. I love having both.

It's bad writing, however naturalistic it's written, that's where you have to do your best acting.

The negative about acting is that you have to spend a great deal of time away from your friends and loved ones.

Actually ninety-nine percent of my acting has nothing to do sci-fi or fantasy, I consider it a good part of my acting, and enjoy the roles I play.

If the acting don't work out, I'll have a future in construction.

Music is my love and to me acting is more mercenary. I don't pound the pavements for roles: if it happens, it happens. I hate that auditioning thing.

I had an acting coach while I was doing the show and every week I could see my work improving. I really liked working on the show because I was learning new things every day.

Every one of the world's dictatorships can and does claim to be acting in the name of the people.

It has been argued that British girls are incapable of deep feeling or brilliant acting owing to their lack of temperament. This, I am positive, is not true.

My passion and energy get mistaken for anger.

I am an actress and acting is my passion... period!

I guess I'm just a normal kid apart from the acting.

One of the things I love about acting is that it reveals a certain something about yourself, but it doesn't reveal your own personal story.

The eyes are the windows of your soul, and when you're acting, they're one of your most important instruments. Especially for close-ups!

Acting is a matter of giving away secrets.

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.

Acting has always been something for me that's been a romp. I just show up and I have a good time, and I hope that I get through the day and I can have lunch in the sun.

Acting is a strange profession, and, yes, sometimes I struggle with its worth, its value in the world.

It doesn't work that way, you know, because most parts that you think you'd do well, most other people don't. So they offer you something - The Avengers is a good example... I fitted into that because I came from that sort of background. It's not even acting.

I was taken by the romanticism of being thought of as an adult and living in a world that was completely new to me. I fell in love with acting then.

That's one of the great things about acting - you get to pretend you're somebody else, which is great if you get bored with yourself.

Acting isn't a sure thing. We're not set to have jobs for the rest of lives, and fame is really fickle.

When I was younger and studying acting, I never ever saw myself in the sitcom world; it was drama that really turned me on and still does.

I write my plays to create an excuse for full-tilt acting and performing.

Believe it or not, I kind of went into professional wrestling so I could get an avenue into acting.

I like both music and acting, and they both have a lot in common - timing, immediacy, stuff like that. But acting is more regimented. You wait around for hours, you don't get to write the script, you get hired. Music represents me better. I'm not acting; I'm just expressing myself.

So if I get pegged as a bikini girl, that's fine, and that can still translate into acting or other areas. But, no, I don't wanna be doing bikini shoots my whole life.

Acting has always been such escapism for me.

But most of what I've learned about acting - and a lot of what I've learned about life in the past seven years - was taught to me by Robert Altman

I don't care to analyze acting. On the other hand there is a fascination because distributors are putting out British films. You get films here with great performances you'll never see again. Why compare. We should go after the businessmen.

The real actor has a direct line to the collective heart.

I'm enjoying it, but I still don't know why I'm hooked on acting.

I was going to buy a van and move to LA so I could secretly pursue acting without any of my friends knowing.

Acting is an aesthetic career, which is annoying.

I've never been in the music industry, only acting.

You don't take a job in acting at all expecting 25 years in and a pension.

One of the joys about acting is researching.

Talk that does not end in any kind of action is better suppressed altogether.

When I was in acting classes early on, there were so many people in these classes who were doing great work, and you'd just look at them and say, 'Wow, I hope to someday be like that.' And yet these people never worked. You never saw them.

In college, I went to school for acting; we had to learn phonetics just to be able to do dialects and all that stuff. I'm somebody who does better just hearing it. I'll just imitate it, and I get it better that way. When I know too much information, I'm not great.

Everyone thinks acting is easy. It's far from easy, but it's the most gratifying thing I do.

I've never cared for the idea of a career path, or where a film might 'take me.' My love is for acting not money, so I only take on roles that I find challenging, in stories I find interesting.

I have had a very physical acting career, but on 'Newsroom,' it's not about physicality, but it's about presence. I get to just be. Strong, sensitive, quiet strength can be much more intimidating than the screaming loud guy, and I'm so glad to get to show this side of me, which, to be honest, is a lot like who I really am.

Without wonder and insight, acting is just a trade. With it, it becomes creation.

Acting is playing pretend, playing a children's game at an adult level, but with children's rules. It's fun to play bad guys. I've never been in a fight in my life, so it's fun to play something that's different.

I've made a kind of pact with myself where I said, It doesn't matter what it is as long as I'm acting.

I'm suspicious of the idea of architects acting like business executives, brand managers, or purveyors of luxury goods.

At this point, I've really failed at a lot of things. It's nice to be able to say that, in a way. I've failed at music. I've failed at dance. And acting - there have been times when I went out and read lines to audition for acting parts. I believe that if anybody wrangled together those audition tapes, it would be pretty hysterically funny.

In 1998, the acting roles suddenly bottomed out. I was no longer getting scripts; even my agent stopped calling. When I finally got him on the phone to ask him what was going on, he paused, then said: 'Well, Christine, you're 45.' I got rid of him.

There's only two givens with choosing acting as a profession: one is you will always be unemployed, always, and it doesn't matter how much money you make, you're still always going to be unemployed; and that you have no power.

For me, acting was always a way to explore emotions - to dip into the well and really try to reach rock bottom down there. That was the most exciting part of it. I hadn't found anything that really allowed me to do that until I came upon acting.

Acting is experience with something sweet behind it.

If I do a song where I'm angry, when it's time to perform it live I'm not mad, I'm happy. I'm at a concert. But I have to somehow drum up that rage. That's acting.

I always wanted to be an actor, but with a speech impediment it's kind of tough. I decided to roll the dice and take an acting class, which was very, very nerve-wracking... my stomach would just be in knots.

To be an actor you have to be a child.

First of all, I choose the great roles, and if none of these come, I choose the mediocre ones, and if they don't come, I choose the ones that pay the rent.

When you look at the early-'30s movies, like King Kong, the codes of acting are very similar to those of silent movies. In some of the silent movies - the good ones, the ones done by the best directors - the acting is very, very natural

Acting is the expression of a neurotic impulse. It's a bum's life. Quitting acting, that's the sign of maturity.

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.