I’ve played real people before, but I never knew them.

Acting is a nice childish profession – pretending you’re someone else and, at the same time, selling yourself.

I wouldn’t put myself forward to do a film like ‚Changeling‘ if I thought I couldn’t pull people into a story because of all the other ways people see me.

Exploration by real people inspires us.

No passion so effectually robs the mind of all its powers of acting and reasoning as fear.

You want to play another kind of character in another genre, and it’s been something I’ve been trying to do if I can in the career so far, and it’s something I hope to continue because it’s interesting to me and you get to do different things as an actor.

The art of acting consists in keeping people from coughing.

A lot of artists fail when they try to act, and they flop. So when I get into acting, it’s going to be to do it well, something good, something of quality. I want people to say, ‚Wow, that movie‘ – or that show or whatever – ‚turned out really well.‘

‚Leading man‘ just means people want to see you and assume that you can hold a film, carry a movie.

Acting is the perfect idiot’s profession.

Michelle Pfeiffer hasn’t been finding a lot of work recently because she doesn’t like what a woman her age is offered. That’s a real double standard. You get Sean Connery, who gets older and older, still playing opposite young ladies, but it doesn’t work the other way around.

It’s much more fun to play something you’re nothing like than what you are… It’s much easier to hide yourself in a character.

I’d go from film to film and almost detach from one world and jump in another. I was living as these people and not having a self. I didn’t know who I was. And things just get really dark.

I think, as far as branching out with acting, it would take something really right on the mark to distract me from music, because music is everything to me.

I’ve been fortunate. I don’t pick scripts. Scripts pick me.

I play a nobody in Japan.

I think all those actors from that generation, like Bogart – they were wonderful actors. They didn’t act. They just came on and they did it, and the characters were wonderful.

I love performing, you know, because, like I say, I’m a ham for this stuff.

It’s nice to finally get scripts offered to me that aren’t the ones Tom Hanks wipes his butt with.

I like talking. I like acting.

Because we’re actors we can pretend and fake it, but I’d rather the intimate investment was authentic.

We think it’s fun for our kids to have cameos and join us on set, but not to be actors. That’s not our goal for Brad and me at all. I think we would both prefer that they didn’t become actors.

I’ve got no need to prove to myself that I can do Shakespeare. I’ve done it.

I never wanted to stay in one genre; I never wanted to be pigeon-holed or defined as the actor who only worked in one genre. I want to be able to work in all different genres. For me it’s fun, and that’s how I grow as an actor.

Act well your part, there all the honour lies.

I’ve always felt toward the slightest scene, even if all I had to do in a scene was just to come in and say, ‚Hi,‘ that the people ought to get their money’s worth and that this is an obligation of mine, to give them the best you can get from me.

I’ve done films where we don’t rehearse, and I’ve done films where we heavily rehearse. I like rehearsals.

Acting is a question of absorbing other people’s personalities and adding some of your own experience.

All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players: they have their exits and their entrances; and one man in his time plays many parts, his acts being seven ages.

Life’s like a play: it’s not the length, but the excellence of the acting that matters.

I’m not a photographer, so I didn’t get into F-stops or ND filters or background, foreground, cross-light, all that stuff. But I was interested in the camera and the lenses. That’s the world that I’m moving in, in terms of acting and giving a performance.

When I started out, I didn’t have any desire to be an actress or to learn how to act. I just wanted to be famous.

Stand-up can take you in so many different places, man. So many doors can be opened up from stand-up comedy, and the first one that was opened up for me was acting.

I’ve done auditions where the casting director is taking the paper out of my hand in the middle of reading.

If you look at me in ‚Ride Along,‘ even though I’m playing two different characters, my demeanor and my tone were not aggressive.

I want to play a fireman and a spy. I want to learn special effects.

Movies are a fad. Audiences really want to see live actors on a stage.

It’s very rare that you get a director that lets you be creative and bring what you feel your character should do or should be.

One good thing about acting in film is that it’s good therapy.

I’ve got a great sense of humor, and if I’m able to say or do something in a movie that people feel like they want to repeat, that’s hugely flattering.

When I got into this, I never thought about reviews. I never thought about what people would say about me, 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.

All of the Vines that were acted & setup & had nice cameras, those weren’t the good Vines. The good Vines were, like, a random little kid in the middle of a forest, like, yelling.

The thing that will never go away is that connection you make with a band or a song where you’re moved by the fact that it’s real people making music. You make that human connection with a song like ‚Let It Be‘ or ‚Long and Winding Road‘ or a song like ‚Bohemian Rhapsody‘ or ‚Roxanne,‘ any of those songs. They sound like people making music.

I can’t act!

I hold the world but as the world, Gratiano; A stage where every man must play a part, And mine is a sad one.

In acting, you have to pull from real-life situations, from people, to help develop a character.

I got started as an actor when I was 12.

Stand-up can take you in so many different places, man. So many doors can be opened up from stand-up comedy, and the first one that was opened up for me was acting. But you can go from acting to being a TV personality to being a radio personality to being a writer to being a producer, to just being a visionary, to voiceover work.

Acting is nothing more or less than playing. The idea is to humanize life.

It’s really fun to put yourself into a character – into shoes you wouldn’t normally be in.

My favorite movies of all times is ‚Doctor Zhivago,‘ and I love ‚Gone With the Wind.‘ I’d love to play some Southern belle or something where I owned a plantation.

I had no idea of the character. But the moment I was dressed, the clothes and the make-up made me feel the person he was. I began to know him, and by the time I walked onto the stage he was fully born.

I seem to be getting a lot of things pushed my way that are strong women. It’s like people see Hackers and they send me offers to play tough women with guns, the kind who wear no bra and a little tank top. I’d like to play strong women who are also very feminine.

I wouldn’t use the word ‚scared‘ for my role as Hitchcock, but it was my most insecure. Taking on such a formidable, giant personality such as Hitchcock; he was one of the great geniuses of world cinema. Sheer genius.

Acting is the most minor of gifts. After all, Shirley Temple could do it when she was four.

I was asked to act when I couldn’t act. I was asked to sing ‚Funny Face‘ when I couldn’t sing, and dance with Fred Astaire when I couldn’t dance – and do all kinds of things I wasn’t prepared for. Then I tried like mad to cope with it.

I like to hide behind the characters I play. Despite the public perception, I am a very private person who has a hard time with the fame thing.

Acting is just a way of making a living, the family is life.

The art of acting is not to act. Once you show them more, what you show them, in fact is bad acting.

There are a whole bunch of roles where people say, ‚Oh, you’re playing yourself.‘ I guess it’s kind of a compliment. Or people say, ‚Oh, man, you just roll out of bed and do that.‘ The work is to make it look effortless. That’s the hard part.

Thinking is easy, acting is difficult, and to put one’s thoughts into action is the most difficult thing in the world.