acting quotes

You want to play another kind of character in another genre, and it’s been something I’ve been trying to do if I can in the career so far, and it’s something I hope to continue because it’s interesting to me and you get to do different things as an actor.

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 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.

In every movie I do have a dialogue.

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.

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

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.

I seem to be getting a lot of things pushed my way that are strong women. It’s like people see Hackers and they send me offers to play tough women with guns, the kind who wear no bra and a little tank top. I’d like to play strong women who are also very feminine.

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.

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

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.

It’s nice to finally get scripts offered to me that aren’t the ones Tom Hanks wipes his butt with.

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.

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.

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

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

I don’t really get into a big intellectual analysis of why I am going to do a certain script or not.

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.

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.

Movies are a fad. Audiences really want to see live actors on a stage.

I’ve played real people before, but I never knew them.

Acting is just a way of making a living, the family is life.

When I’m a director, I look at myself the actor as a completely different person. It’s somebody else up there, an actor playing a role. I keep myself out of it.

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.

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.

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

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 wouldn’t put myself forward to do a film like ‚Changeling‘ if I thought I couldn’t pull people into a story because of all the other ways people see me.

Acting is happy agony.

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

One good thing about acting in film is that it’s good therapy.

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!

Act well your part, there all the honour lies.

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.

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 always play women I would date.

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

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.

I was acting when I was playing baseball.

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.

An actor is supposed to be a sensitive instrument.

I want to show audiences I can act.

I like talking. I like acting.

An actress is not a machine, but they treat you like a machine. A money machine.

I played Othello, but I didn’t sit around thinking how Laurence Olivier did it when he played it. That wouldn’t do me any good.

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

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

I enjoy acting when you really hit it right.

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.

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

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.

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 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.

‚Via Dolorosa‘ is the only thing I have ever acted in my life, professionally, and I’ll never act again.

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

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’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.

Life’s like a play: it’s not the length, but the excellence of the acting that matters.

Like any creative human being, I would like a bit more control so that it would be a little easier for me when the director says, ‚One tear, right now,‘ that one tear would pop out.

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.