Actors Quotations

Every actor-performer says this, and it sounds so irritating, but I'm not the most outgoing person.

Actors, I don't think, ever really grow up. I'm hoping that that rejuvenating process applies to me, too. It has so far. I've been very lucky.

Good actors, especially when they know their character, will come in and either tell you in advance that they have an idea, or in the middle of the rehearsal or the scene they'll let it loose and you go, 'Ah that's great.'

A good actor is somebody who can be truthful and fascinating and interesting and enlightening.

As an actor there's a lot of scrutiny and, even when you've had success, it becomes about sustaining that success. A friend of mine described it as a peakless mountain. Even for De Niro there's Pacino and for Pacino there's De Niro.

Being a salesman and an actor were not that dissimilar: It is a good lesson in covering up your feelings. No one wants to buy from someone who looks depressed.

After the war, there was no industry. We lost the war. We had our whole city destroyed. No money. No studio. No film. No camera. No equipment. We would shoot in the street. We had no actors. Nothing. But we wanted to do movies. And we did the best movies in the world.

Actors are trusting souls, and we must go by gut-level instinct, even after our agents and business managers weigh all the odds.

The United Nations remains our most important global actor. These days we are continuously reminded of the enormous responsibility of the Security Council to uphold international peace and stability.

When the curtain falls, the best thing an actor can do is to go away.

I just wanted to be a guy who could earn a living as an actor, and I did that for a long time.

I'm an actor... I do a job and I go home. Why are you interested in me? You don't ask a truck driver about his job.

I've actually usually been wary of taking on science fiction as an actor because it's really tough to do. It's really difficult to execute. There's often lots of prosthetics, green screen and special effects, and it can get very technical.

You have to carry so many archetypes as an actor, especially as a blonde-haired, blue-eyed one.

Wearing a monkey suit really lets you know where you stand as an actor.

I should be soaring away with my head tilted slightly toward the gods, feeding on the caviar of Shakespeare. An actor must act.

I'm like this mercenary actor going from show to show - people love to hire me, but then don't want me around much.

I'm sure one reason I became an actor is my basic unwillingness to live one life.

Great actors are so easy to direct. It's like they're big 747s that you just have to move left and right, and I don't really need to direct. I need to put them in the right costume, with the right haircut, in the right location, and with the right actor to act with.

Most parts that can be played by one actor can equally well be played by another, but not this.

There's sort of a very symbiotic thing that happens on good TV shows with great writers, which is that they start to sort of embrace who the actors are and try to make the roles more specific to what they bring and what they can do.

Somehow I seem to have been gently bypassed as a serious actor.

Nothing makes an actor feel freer and more inventive and more creative than being trusted.

It's lovely to work with a group of actors who make you laugh and smile.

Every actor dreams of getting a big break, a big opportunity.

To be a good actor, you have to be very smart. But to be a great actor, you also have to have a streak of, 'I'm an idiot, a complete lunatic.'

I like playing off strong actors, whether it's Benedict Cumberbatch or Dominic Cooper. Also I'm a hopeless romantic, so I'm fascinated by relationships.

One of the things we're taught as actors is restraint - don't jump off the cliff.

I'm not saying that Sam J. Jones was Flash Gordon - there's no such thing. No actor can be the person, that's a bunch of crap. People pay to see an actor be himself, whether he plays Hamlet or whatever.

I'm not bragging but my movies have grossed well over a billion dollars.

But all actors go through the process, it's hit and miss, you have achievement and failure.

I think audiences like to see their favorite actor handle himself physically on screen, however he does it. He can wrestle, or box, or he can know karate.

The marvels of daily life are exciting; no movie director can arrange the unexpected that you find in the street.

Good directors can bring certain things out of you, with their intensity or gentleness or sensitivity or understanding. They can make an actor feel he can do no wrong.

Every actor hopes that the character that they're playing continues to be a challenge throughout their tenure of their show.

As an actor, we spend so much putting the mask on and trying to be someone you're not.

My chosen occupation isn’t necessarily movie star; I see my chosen occupation as actor.

Acting is not that far from mental disease: An actor works on splitting his character into others. It is like a kind of schizophrenia.

You know the actor John Garfield? In one movie he walked up to this train station, the ticket booth, and the guy says, 'Yes, where are you going?' And he says, 'I want a ticket to nowhere.' I thought: that's it. The freedom to do that. I want a ticket to nowhere.

As an actor, you should be willing to take challenges.

I couldn't care less about actors' trailers and food on sets and stuff like that - I just want to act

I never thought I would get married and have kids. I thought I was going to be a gypsy actor, traveling all over the world playing the great roles. I ended up having a kid very young, and it put things in perspective.

Out of all the actors I have worked with, I love working with Larry Hagman the most. We were very close and it was just a wonderful time.

Any great character is the combination of a brilliant actor and the right writing.

I just always wanted to be an actor. I don't remember ever not wanting to be an actor. I did a lot of musical theater when I was younger, and I really hope to get back there someday.

I'm an actor, paid to act. I don't bring personal problems to the sets. Dad taught me that.

I was just a young guy who was excited to become a comedian and an actor and I just wanted to get to do what I got to do.

The best thing about switching from being an actor to being a director is that you dont have to shave or hold your stomach in anymore.

Obviously with the onset of cable and satellite, there are more opportunities for programming and original programming, so it creates more opportunities for actors and producers and directors and everything.

I really want my career to be as an actor-writer-director-producer, you know? I don't know what will be stronger than the other.

My journey has been that of a character actor.

I love independent filmmaking. I don't agree with a lot of it, but that's the point.

I had admired Richard Burton for years and years before I had ever worked with him. He was a great, great actor. It was a joy to get to know him as a person.

An actor has no more right to be temperamental than a bank clerk.

I always felt thrilled and amazed that I could put actor on my tax form.

To be a character actor is to be open, to be a chameleon.

An actors most important responsibility is to know lines well.

To me, a lot of what makes a good actor is not what a teacher tells you to do but how you respond when youre on your own.

Theater is the most enriching and thrilling thing to do as an actor.

A writer can write in an attic, or on top of a bus. Or with a sharp stick in some wet cement. To act, an actor has to have words. A stage. a camera turning.

People use the Method as a shield; it shields them from being vulnerable. I hear all these young actors who are like, 'I'm Method, I'm gonna go live in the house, you know, I totally get it, I've done it, I've been there', but one thing I know is it kills spontaneity.

I invite the entire spectrum, shall we call it, of feeling. Because that is my greatest resource as a film actor. I need to be able to feel everything, which is why I refuse to go on any kind of medication. Not that I need to! But my point is, I wouldn't even explore that, because it would get in the way of my instrument.

As an actor, you have to have your history.

My biggest fantasy as an actor is to be in situations that make me uncomfortable and force me out of my comfort zone.

The only thing an actor owes his public is not to bore them.

I don't think I'm even close to fulfilling my potential. And I think also that, unlike a pianist or a flutist, an actor has an instrument that is constantly changing.

Fat noses have no place in the Hindi film industry. But it is not so in the West - otherwise, Anthony Quinn would have never been an actor.

Actors are con men and con men are actors.

The fitness builds the foundation for me as an actor to have clarity. Fitness has always been the base of where I start off as a performer.

The Hulk' was the beginning of me, a platform as an actor to grow.

I became popular very young. I viewed myself as just a young actor trying to figure out how to do well, and, you know, making mistakes and learning and growing.

Working with amazing people, you continue to learn and develop yourself, as an actor and as a person.

Bruce Lee only played himself. Chuck Norris is a martial artist that does acting. I want to be an actor that does martial arts.

The thing I love about being an actor is the ability to travel and experience new cultures.

I don't think I would be an actor if I was that intelligent.

I weren't an actor, I'd be a wildlife biologist or forest ranger.

Nothing can teach you what it's like to work on a film set, and the best education there can be for an actor is to walk up the street and observe human nature.

I started as an actor in the theater playing a lot of character parts, and suddenly, I found myself in this place where it felt like I was getting locked into a kind of a stereotype, and it did bother me.

Well, an actor is an actor is actor, to paraphrase someone or other and the opportunity to work, to have a steady engagement, certainly seemed like an appealing concept to me.

Once the curtain is raised, the actor is ceases to belong to himself. He belongs to his character, to his author, to his public. He must do the impossible to identify himself with the first, not to betray the second, and not to disappoint the third.

The secret of being a great actor is a love of food.

I love bad movies, whereas going to the theater for me is a painful experience. I think it's really hard to sit and watch actors do something live and have it not go well.

I imagine it was much different in the 1970s. That was the Renaissance for black actors, albeit in blaxploitation movies. There was a much greater preponderance of work then than there is now.

A successful swindler has to be a great salesman even more than a great actor.

Bill Powell is the only intelligent actor I've ever met

Broadway has changed tremendously from the early days when the shows were referred to as musical comedies. Musical Theater is now a more expanded art form. Back then, singer/actors were not the norm. From the 60's to now, it is necessary to do it all to be a consummate Broadway performer.

In the 60s, if you wanted to be an actor, you couldn't do just one thing.

I think film is a world of directors. Theater is a world of actors.

Every ten years there is a new generation of actors.

Actors never retire, they just get less and less work.

Actors who say they can dive inside a character are either schizophrenic or lying.

I have great admiration for athletes. They are just like actors in a lot of ways. They have tremendous pressures and conflicts. They have to compete, and they can't stay home just because they have a head cold.

I don't possess a lot of self-confidence. I'm an actor so I simply act confident every time I hit the stage.

You see some of these actors, they have a permanent smile on their face. How can they do that? It really fascinates me.

The main factor in any form of creativeness is the life of a human spirit, that of the actor and his part, their joint feelings and subconscious creation.

Well, I've been in several films including documentaries, but the big blockbuster, I was hired as advisor to the actors, I was trying to make Jesuits out of them

The best actors instinctively feel out what the other actors need, and they just accommodate it.

As an actor, you want a director who makes you feel comfortable in a place that you can really create and try a lot of different things.

When I go on the set, I'm so rushed. When I see the actors at rehearsal, when I love it, I want to keep the mood - my mood and the actors' mood also. So I have to push the crew faster. I don't want to lose the mood.

Before I was an actor I was a break dancer, one of those street performers you see. I guess my introduction into the professional world of performing was a stint as back up dancer for Lionel Richie and I performed at the closing ceremony at the '84 Olympics.