Our stories come from our lives and from the playwright’s pen, the mind of the actor, the roles we create, the artistry of life itself and the quest for peace.

The challenge for me as an actor is if you become a celebrity, you don’t meet strangers anymore. And strangers are where we have our anonymity. And I believe it’s essential for the soul to be anonymous, especially if you’re going to be an actor.

I was lousy in school. Real screwed-up. A moron. I was antisocial and didn’t bother with the other kids. A really bad student. I didn’t have any brains. I didn’t know what I was doing there. That’s why I became an actor.

It’s easy to become very self-critical when you’re an actor. Then you get critiqued by the critics. Whether you agree with them or not, people are passing judgment on you.

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.

A true artist is expected to be all that is noble-minded, and this is not altogether a mistake; on the other hand, however, in what a mean way are critics allowed to pounce upon us.

While we look to the dramatist to give romance to realism, we ask of the actor to give realism to romance.

I’m not a playwright.

I always wanted to do things right and represent myself as somebody that took the art serious and someone that took the business serious also, so I had time to weigh the options and figure it out and do my best to create the situation that was ideal.

I got started as an actor when I was 12.

I’m not Russell Crowe. I’m not going to do a period piece.

Let us have no machine-made ornament at all; it is all bad and worthless and ugly.

I enjoyed working with Stephen Merchant. He was wonderful. I’ve been such a big fan of his acting.

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

Well, in order for me to be successful… In order to be a great artist – musician, actor, painter, whatever – you must be able to be private in public at all times.

My songs are like my children – I expect them to support me when I’m old.

If you look at my job, my union card, it says ‚actor.‘ It don’t say nothing about celebrity, movie star, nothing like that, and that’s one thing that keeps me humble.

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 love, love, love just being hands on at all times in the studio.

I’m definitely a Polaroid camera girl. For me, what I’m really excited about is bringing back the artistry and the nature of Polaroid.

I’m proud to be an actor. See, as an actor, you live longer. Football players, the brain and all that stuff, ooh-eee, that’s not good.

There is a need for aloneness, which I don’t think most people realise for an actor. It’s almost having certain kinds of secrets for yourself that you’ll let the whole world in on only for a moment, when you’re acting. But everybody is always tugging at you. They’d all like sort of a chunk of you.

My kind of composing is more like the work of a gardener. The gardener takes his seeds and scatters them, knowing what he is planting but not quite what will grow where and when – and he won’t necessarily be able to reproduce it again afterwards either.

If a poet is anybody, he is somebody to whom things made matter very little – somebody who is obsessed by Making.

I like to change characters and then, slowly I believe the audience treat me as, like an actor who can fight. It’s not like an action star.

I don’t see myself as a pop artist. Like, when you hear ‚pop,‘ you’re like, ‚Oh, bubblegum, jumpy little girly stuff,‘ and I feel like, ‚Uh-uh. That’s not me.‘

A statesman who confines himself to popular legislation – or, for the matter of that, a playwright who confines himself to popular plays – is like a blind man’s dog who goes wherever the blind man pulls him, on the ground that both of them want to go to the same place.

The poet, being an imitator like a painter or any other artist, must of necessity imitate one of three objects – things as they were or are, things as they are said or thought to be, or things as they ought to be. The vehicle of expression is language – either current terms or, it may be, rare words or metaphors.

Years ago I met Richard Burton in Port Talbot, my home town, and afterwards he passed in his car with his wife, and I thought, ‚I want to get out and become like him‘. Not because of Wales, because I love Wales, but because I was so limited as a child at school and so bereft and lonely, and I thought becoming an actor would do that.

There’s been people who’ve rapped and produced – like Kanye – but I don’t feel like on the rapping side there’s ever been a producer who can rap as good as I think I can rap.

Software is a great combination between artistry and engineering.

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.

Movies were invented for Jimmy Cagney, and he was invented for the movies. A perfect match.

In football, it’s the job of the player to play, the coach to coach, the official to officiate. Each guy is charged with upholding his end, nothing more. In golf, the player, coach and official are rolled into one, and they overlap completely. Golf really is the best microcosm of life – or at least the way life should be.

There’s no real excuse for being successful enough as an actor to do what you want and then selling out. You do it pure. You don’t try to adapt it, make it commercial.

Your life is like a play with several acts. Some of the characters who enter have short roles to play, others, much larger. Some are villains and others are good guys. But all of them are necessary; otherwise, they wouldn’t be in the play. Embrace them all, and move on to the next act.

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.

Nothing is so discouraging to an actor than to have to work for long hours upon hours in brightly lighted interior sets.

A good wife is one who serves her husband in the morning like a mother does, loves him in the day like a sister does and pleases him like a prostitute in the night.

There is but one stage for the peasant and the actor.

For different roles, my condition and training and diet does alter. Depending on the role, it will really dictate the type of training I do.

I want to be an Asian Robert De Niro.

An actor is supposed to be a sensitive instrument.

Music is a really great creative tool for me, for different roles.

I am capable of holding the quote-unquote ‚title‘ of leading man. Leading man just means people want to see you and assume that you can hold a film, carry a movie.

Morgan Freeman is so class. He’s so cool. He’s so scary.

I just wanted to be a composer; I became an actor by default, really. I got a scholarship to a college of music and drama, hoping to take a scholarship in music. But I ended up as an acting student, so I’ve stuck with that for the last 50-odd years.

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’ve known Ben Stiller for a minute. One of my first movies was ‚Along Came Polly.‘

The knighthood was a tremendous honour, I don’t dismiss it. But I feel embarrassed by the flowery, theatrical stuff that goes with being an actor.

I thank God I’m in a position where I can pick and choose – there are some roles I don’t play.

Oh yes. I’m an actor, so I just learn my lines, and show up and do it. I gave it a little bit of thought.

The life of an action star is very short. I want to be an actor like Robert De Niro, like Dustin Hoffman or Clint Eastwood who in their 70s or 80s can still act.

Governments need to have both shepherds and butchers.

As a soccer player, I wanted an FA Cup winner’s medal. As an actor you want an Oscar. As a chef it’s three-Michelin’s stars, there’s no greater than that. So pushing yourself to the extreme creates a lot of pressure and a lot of excitement, and more importantly, it shows on the plate.

My name is Adam Sandler. I’m not particularly talented. I’m not particularly good-looking. And yet I’m a multi-millionaire.

I like Ryan Gosling as an actor. I watch all of his movies, and he’s Canadian and I just like his swag. I read his interviews and I’m a big fan of his.

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

I met Will Smith twice. I didn’t talk to him for too long but I was trying to let him know that my age group grew up watching him – he was the coolest guy on television and the coolest guy in movies.

When you are an actor, you have to stay inside this world, but when you are with the crew, on the outside, you are in the dirt, working through all the issues. It’s just a different way of working, and I think I preferred it.