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

I’m not actually a very keen performer. I like putting shows together. I like putting events together. In fact, everything I do is about the conceptualizing and realization of a piece of work, whether it’s the recording or the performance side.

I’m always cast in these strange men… that’s not me, really.

Even if you are a minority of one, the truth is the truth.

Children are a wonderful gift. They have an extraordinary capacity to see into the heart of things and to expose sham and humbug for what they are.

Be as you wish to seem.

If we are not ashamed to think it, we should not be ashamed to say it.

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

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.

Stand-up is hard.

There are very few people who really appreciate my shows. People come to the show and they pay and they enjoy it, but I don’t really think most people really understand what they’ve seen.

Why lie? I’m not going to be a hypocrite and say the opposite of what I think, like some others do.

I enjoy singing my songs in front of people. I enjoy being involved in making the artwork for albums and stupid stuff like that.

Why do I not seek some real good; one which I could feel, not one which I could display?

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.

If my future were determined just by my performance on a standardized test, I wouldn’t be here. I guarantee you that.

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

God has given you one face, and you make yourself another.

I can’t very well be teaching one way and living my life another way. What I do in life must be consistent with the things I say. And the same goes for you.

I write from my soul. This is the reason that critics don’t hurt me, because it is me. If it was not me, if I was pretending to be someone else, then this could unbalance my world, but I know who I am.

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 was always trying – I never wanted to let my fans down; I always wanted them to see me in my art form.

Many things difficult to design prove easy to performance.

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.

We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful what we pretend to be.

No duty the Executive had to perform was so trying as to put the right man in the right place.

When you’re in comedy, people always come up and say, ‚Oh, it must be so hard.‘ It really isn’t hard unless you’re not good at it. If you can do it, its really kind of fun and easy.

I don’t really have a gimmick or a ‚thing.‘ I’m one of the few artists who gets to be himself every day.

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.

In business, the idea of measuring what you are doing, picking the measurements that count like customer satisfaction and performance… you thrive on that.

I take a lot of pride in the work I do, because people pay to see me. They’ve got to get babysitters, park their car, get popcorn and candy. I’ve got to be conscious of that.

But even the President of the United States sometimes must have to stand naked.

I did stand-up for my grandparents every day when I was, like, eight.

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

I think country music is popular – has been popular and will always be popular because I think a lot of real people singing about a lot of real stuff about real people. And it’s simple enough for people to understand it. And we kind of roll with the punches.

You don’t need anybody to tell you who you are or what you are. You are what you are!

Stage actors are usually much more conscious of speaking up and making sure that everyone can hear in the back of the theatre; a film actor probably thinks of that a little less.

All I have to say is basically if performing, singing, acting, and dancing is what you want to do, then you just have to do it – no matter where it is.

I was really too honest a man to be a politician and live.

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.

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.

How you go about testing is just very different to just being in the situation of qualifying, having to go out, having to nail the lap.

If you begin to understand what you are without trying to change it, then what you are undergoes a transformation.

I’ve never been one to sit back and go, ‚I’d better do what the audience wants me to do, because I don’t want to lose them.‘

When you realize who you live for, and who’s important to please, a lot of people will actually start living. I am never going to get caught up in that. I’m gonna look back on my life and say that I enjoyed it – and I lived it for me.

The greatest way to live with honor in this world is to be what we pretend to be.

I’ve just tried to grow up in the most natural and gradual process that I possibly can and make choices I feel are right for me and my fans.

A little sincerity is a dangerous thing, and a great deal of it is absolutely fatal.

It’s very important for Christians to be honest with God, which often, you know, God is much more interested in who you are than who you want to be.

It’s hard to practice compassion when we’re struggling with our authenticity or when our own worthiness is off-balance.

Acting is happy agony.

I have resolved on an enterprise that has no precedent and will have no imitator. I want to set before my fellow human beings a man in every way true to nature; and that man will be myself.

I prefer directing to acting. There is huge freedom that comes from being behind the camera. It brings a lot of responsibilities as well but is intensely rewarding.

Friends accept you the way you are.

Bad performances can happen and are not that serious – even with new players. You can’t, say, sell him, get a new one.

People who say they don’t care what people think are usually desperate to have people think they don’t care what people think.

Electric communication will never be a substitute for the face of someone who with their soul encourages another person to be brave and true.

This is not a showman’s job. I will not step out of character.

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.

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

On a good night, I get underwear, bras, and hotel-room keys thrown onstage… You start to think that you’re Tom Jones.