My act is an exaggeration of a part of me. I’m much more expressive off stage.

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 go onstage and I talk, and I remember what I’m saying, and I track it.

My role 14 years ago in Richard III – that was the first time I played a bad guy and learned a lot about it – they have all the fun!

My show ‚The Big House‘ was picked up; they flew me to New York. I’m about to step on stage to announce Kevin Hart’s ‚The Big House.‘ And a hand grabs my shoulder, ‚Kevin no, they just decided to cancel it.‘ It’s a serious smack-in-the-face business, and either you can take it, or you can’t.

I don’t know what acting is, but I enjoy it.

I tried acting, liked it, and stuck with it. I saw it as the way I would keep that promise to myself of getting back at those who had made my school life a misery.

My method of getting a play across the footlights is like a revolver shooting: every line has a bullet in it and comes with an explosion.

Whatever is on the page is what I’m married to. I’m very prepared. I’m a thespian. I don’t like to improv. I don’t like to go off course ‚cause I think that’s where stuff happens. When you stick to the material ‚cause it’s written so well, that’s where the magic happens.

You know when you’re young and you see a play in high school, and the guys all have gray in their hair and they’re trying to be old men and they have no idea what that’s like? It’s just that stupid the other way around.

If you get something right, you really feel it, right in your chest, on stage. I think it’s an incomparable experience.

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.

I enjoy acting when you really hit it right.

I wear a hat on stage so that people won’t be blinded by the reflection from my head. Also, if I don’t wear a hat, there’s no way that the hat can be at that level by itself on the stage.

I once wanted to prove myself by being a great actress. Now I want to prove that I’m a person. Then maybe I’ll be a great actress.

I try never to wear my own clothes, I pretend I’m someone else.

Playing big, heroic characters with heart is always a lot of fun. I enjoy making movies like that, and a lot of people love to live vicariously through those characters.

It’s very intense to be in front of a live audience. It’s just an amazing experience. It’s dangerous. Everything out there is heightened. The bad stuff is extra-worse. The silences are extra-silent. The good stuff is amazing. It’s electric when you walk out there. For 90 minutes, you’re on this other planet.

Acting helped me as I was growing up. It helped me learn about myself, helped me travel, helped me understand life, express myself, all those wonderful things. So I’m very, very grateful; it’s a fun job. It’s a luxury.

It takes a smart man to play dumb.

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.

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.

To be honest, I never really considered myself to be too much of an actress. So, whenever I get the chance to do music, I’m always, like, just in it. It’s like, ‚Oh my God, I finally get to do this. I’m so happy.‘

The goal for me is always to have the opportunity to work in different genres. This is a great and exciting time in my career, where I can have the opportunity to work in different genres, and also I recognize there’s not a lot of actors who have that opportunity and I’m grateful for it.

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.

I was acting when I was playing baseball.

When the first big paycheque with ‚Dumb And Dumber‘ hit, I went: ‚Gosh, I wonder if this will affect my performance. Will I do a take and think, was that worth $7 million?‘ But that never happened. If anything, it made me rebel against that thing when people who get rich start playing it safe.

Act well your part, there all the honour lies.

I can’t act!

I will not play just an evil part. In fact, I got offered $7 million several years ago to play the part that Faye Dunaway played in ‚Supergirl.‘ I was kind of insulted. I was impressed with the money, but I said, ‚Why are you asking me to play an evil witch? Do I come across as an evil witch to you?‘

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.

My dad was into the 1950s doo-wop era. If you look at those groups, or at James Brown, Jackie Wilson and the Temptations in the 1960s, you’ll see you had to be sharp onstage.

I knew that I was ‚interesting‘ at 18 because I was aware that I could get away with doing things on stage.

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.

People usually think according to their inclinations, speak according to their learning and ingrained opinions, but generally act according to custom.

I don’t have a vast longing for the stage.

Actually, you have to be a little bit in love with your leading man and vice versa. If you’re going to portray love, you have to feel it. You can’t do it any other way. But you don’t carry it beyond the set.

Love is a gross exaggeration of the difference between one person and everybody else.

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.‘

Nothing feels better than going onstage and everybody is singing every word – and actually wanting to see you.

Meryl and Katharine Hepburn are probably the two greatest actresses of this and the last century.

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.

Dakota Fanning is a child, but she is a wonderful actor. I don’t know what a child actor is. She’s an actor who’s a child.

There’s something about being in front of a live audience that’s fun. It’s a really interesting, very electric, very alive, and intense experience, and you can’t get it anywhere else. And I’ve been doing it since I was 23, so it’s part of my being – it’s part of my fabric as a person.

I worked with Lawrence Olivier some years ago. He was a great mentor.

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

Lady Gaga is my name. If you know me, and you call me Stefani, you don’t really know me at all.

You spend so much time in the world of virtual that the actual – which nothing is more actual than stand-up – it’s a painful experience for the audience, and the comedian a lot of time – we miss that.

I was ashamed to admit I was hipped to the idea of acting. That’s why I started in with the props.

When Brexiters told the public that people were exaggerating, that there would be a financial meltdown, I think it’s been proven that they were not exaggerating.

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

All cartoon characters and fables must be exaggeration, caricatures. It is the very nature of fantasy and fable.

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

My mom always wanted me to be an actor. And I started going to theater and going on auditions young.

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

I think that people are interested seeing me on the screen.

Acting is happy agony.

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

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.

On ‚Grey’s Anatomy‘ I wouldn’t care what I was playing – I would play a corpse, ‚cause I love it that much. It is deep true love, and it will never die.

Something I learned as an actor was which scenes needed to be rehearsed and which actors are good with rehearsal, which actors learn from it, and which ones grow stale because they start to second-guess themselves.