Actor Quotes

I decided to become an actor because I was failing in school and I needed the credits.

This really should be kept secret, but you can learn a lot by watching the making-of DVDs. Every actor should do it. You figure out what you're dealing with.

Change is vital to any actor. If you keep playing lead after lead, you're really gonna dry up. Because all those vehicles wean you away from the truths of human behaviour.

As an actor, your life experience is just as important as studying.

You know, OJ was a really nice guy, and he knew his lines. He was nice to everybody on the set. He got to be a better actor, I thought, with every movie.

Most times when people pitch you as being perfect for a part... they don't look at you as an actor who can transform. A lot of people are so literal.

I've been on jobs where there's that one actor who is just a miserable, miserable no-good, dirty bastard, and it just turns the whole process sour.

I think if you work as an actress and are supposed as a character to be in love with some actor, then to some extent you do have to be in love with him.

Now, what does an actor who can't talk do? Wait for silent pictures to come back?

I have made decisions based from purely an actor's point of view.

To me, casting is all about finding a character within the actor off the screen as much as on the screen.

I never dreamed about being an actor, because that was out of reach. Coming from a small town that was big in farming, and also big in clothing factories, you don't dream about being a professional football player or an actor.

All my characters are me. I'm not a good enough actor to become a character. I hear about actors who become the role and I think 'I wonder what that feels like.' Because for me, they're all me.

I was an accidental actor. I was never formally trained.

I don't think you can discriminate against budgets, you know? I'm an actor, I guess, so I'm just trying to play as many characters as I can. If there's a character I think I can play, and they're going to let me do it, I'll do it whether it's $10 or $1 million or more.

As an actor, I was just satisfied to work.

I have pretty thick skin, and I think if you're going to be in this business, if you're going to be an actor or a writer, you better have a thick skin.

No not pigeon holed me as an actor, or as a character, or as to what I could do - but what I would do... and the fact is the things you don't do are almost as important as as the things that you do.

A good director creates an environment, which gives the actor the encouragement to fly.

If you're going to be born ugly and be an actor - the least they can do is let you play Lincoln.

Acting is something different to everybody. I just know that if you watch an actor or actress getting better and better, I think that's them just understanding themselves better and better.

A stage actor has to be 10% aware of the audience as he's performing.

The '80s were about trying to establish myself as an actor with a career. And being a teenager enjoying the fruits of being successful with lots of what I think is appropriate for that age.

All children are natural actors, and I'm still a kid. If you grow up completely, you can never be an actor.

As an actor, there's a bit of you that's decided you want to be looked at and watched, but there's a paradoxical bit that wants to run away.

That's what sets apart one actor from another, and that you can't teach. You can't give someone that. When you're working, putting a character together, or in a scene, that's where things will happen that you have to have the intuition to notice them, and to register them.

In the studio the director controls the actor's every move, every inflection, every expression.

I think you can really tell a good actor if you can put a camera on them and they can just talk and emote and react and you don't have to keep cutting away from them, because they are the language and the behavior. It's all a tour-de-force performance.

I wanted really to make it moment to moment, partly because I'm an actor and that's how I operate - actors are all about creating the moment.

There's no way that I could be the president. You can't have a pacifist in the White House... I'm an actor. This is what I do for a living.