acting quotes

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

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.

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.

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.

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

On ‚Think Like a Man,‘ they got the best out of me because they allowed me to bring my own cadences and opinions to the character that I was playing. I think we got the best of that particular character.

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?‘

When you’re supposed to be close and friends in the film, the moment you’re talking as friends off the set, it makes it that much better when you’re filming.

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.

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.

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 was planning to go into architecture. But when I arrived, architecture was filled up. Acting was right next to it, so I signed up for acting instead.

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.

I would love to sign on to do a movie if it was the right role and if it was the right script, because I would be taking time away from music to tell a big grand story, and spend all of my time and pouring all of my emotions into being someone else. So for me to do that, it would have to be a story worth telling.

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

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.‘

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

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

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.

I can’t act!

I got started as an actor when I was 12.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

I play a nobody in Japan.

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

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

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

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.‘

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

It takes a smart man to play dumb.

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.

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

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

I do admire Judi Dench and Sir Ian McKellen, but I’m a philistine. I like the good life too much; I’m not good at going on stage night after night and on wet Wednesday afternoons.

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.

What I do is just go over and over and over my lines and learn the script so well that I can just be easy and relaxed. That’s the way I always work.

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’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.

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.

And of course to work with Jack Nicholson and Diane Keaton, and work with a wonderful, beautiful script directed by Nancy Meyers, it was really for me a dream come true.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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