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

Doing a show for three weeks is nothing like doing a show for seven seasons.

Act well your part, there all the honour lies.

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.

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

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.

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 like talking. I like acting.

I got started as an actor when I was 12.

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.

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?‘

I went to see ‚Phantom of the Opera‘ with my grandma and my mom when I was very little. The stage, the voice, the music… Composer Andrew Lloyd Webber has been a massive inspiration to me for some time – the storytelling, that deliciously somber undertone in his music.

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.‘

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

To be honest with you, 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.

I’ve always loved the idea of playing Black Adam.

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

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

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.

Every time I try to retire, or even think of retiring from acting, my agent comes up with a script.

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

Why, except as a means of livelihood, a man should desire to act on the stage when he has the whole world to act in, is not clear to me.

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.

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.

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.

The last act is bloody, however pleasant all the rest of the play is: a little earth is thrown at last upon our head, and that is the end forever.

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.

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.

People should pursue what they’re passionate about. That will make them happier than pretty much anything else.

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.

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.

See, ‚A Time to Kill‘ was the one I got famous off of. Big ka-boom, over one weekend. After that, I did films that I really wanted to do.

You don’t know when you’re being watched. That’s one of the weird things about celebrity. It’s my least favorite part of acting, celebrity.

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.

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.

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

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

I became an actress because my mom wanted me to become an actress. It took me until my mid-30s to realize I actually didn’t. I actually wanted to write and direct and be more involved in politics and humanitarian issues.

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

The world is a stage, but the play is badly cast.

I have an immense amount of respect for acting. I’ve always loved movies and was always fascinated by movie-making. But to become an actor, I wanted to commit myself.

In every movie I do have a dialogue.

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

I’ve been really fortunate to be able to do different kinds of films in different scales, different genres, different kinds of roles, and that is important to me.

I want to be a recording artist for my whole entire life. But Broadway is something I would come back to at any given moment. I love, love, love doing theater.

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!

It takes a smart man to play dumb.

I want to try something different in Hollywood, to tell the audience I am not just an actor star – I am an actor, too.

Acting is just a process of relaxation, actually. Knowing the text so well and trusting that the instinct and the subconscious mind, whatever you want to call it, is going to take over.

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

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 am able to play monsters well. I understand monsters. I understand madmen.

At some point in time, you definitely have to go drama. Not to say that you’re going drama just because everybody else does it. You do it to challenge yourself. You do it because, naturally, in the profession of acting, you want to show growth. You want to say that you take the craft seriously.

Ever since I was a kid, this was all I wanted to do. I’ve wanted to do music. I wanted to sing. It’s all I know.

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

I decided to pursue music, so I dropped out of school and I told my parents I didn’t want any money from them. I got three jobs and I just hit the ground running.

It’s simple: You get a part. You play a part. You play it well. You do your work and you go home. And what is wonderful about movies is that once they’re done, they belong to the people. Once you make it, it’s what they see. That’s where my head is at.

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.

Give a critic an inch, he’ll write a play.

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

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.