Actor Quotes

I've had some ambivalent feelings about being an actor. I don't know that I've ever been totally and completely comfortable with it.

Basically, you're selling a world as an actor, right? I mean it's like any sales person: if you believe in your product, you know your product, you sell it a lot better.

Someone I met years ago explained to me the difference between a personality and an actor, a personality being Eddie Murphy or Roseanne Barr, and an actor being Morgan Freeman and Alfre Woodard or Marlon Brando.

When an actor comes to me and wants to discuss his character, I say, 'It's in the script.' If he says, 'But what's my motivation?, ' I say, 'Your salary.'

I'm the most out-of-work actor I know. In the last two years I've basically taken meetings for a living.

I could care less about being an action actor like Stallone or Schwarzenegger.

If you really do want to be an actor who can satisfy himself and his audience, you need to be vulnerable.

My concern is to continue respecting my work as I've done since I began as an actor and I could only do that if I'm strong enough to keep on doing what I think best in an artistic way.

In live stage, the actor lives.

If they're willing to pay you what you think you're worth for it, that's why an actor goes to work. A lot of times they want to pay you a lot for a picture you don't want to do.

Even when I was little, people would always ask me if I wanted to be a movie star, and I would always say, 'No, I just want to be an actor.'

Every actor wants to direct.

If you really do want to be an actor who can satisfy himself and his audience, you need to be vulnerable. You must reach the emotional and intellectual level of ability where you can go out stark naked, emotionally, in front of an audience.

Before I was an actor I was an apprentice jockey, and now I'm out there racing against boys, sort of the spokesperson for people over 50 that they can do it.

Sidney Poitier, who is class personified, said: 'Lou, you're a leading man because you're a good actor.' Brought tears to my eyes.

I did not want to put myself on the line, as an Australian playing Britain's greatest comic actor. The fans of Sellers are obsessive, possessive - and aggressive. I did not want to risk their anger - or my own reputation.

Claude Rains was what we call an actor's actor. He was very involved with himself and his performance.

As an actor, being on autopilot is the worst thing possible.

I'm basically a movie actor now, and my big roles are mostly horror movies - unless I'm doing a guest star or something - and occasionally I try to get back into television.

Any competent actor could have done what I did.

The three actors I admire the most are all dead. Humphrey Bogart, Spencer Tracy and the French actor, Jean Gabin. They're all very natural, sort of masculine without being overly macho.

I made a decision that whether or not I was going to make under the national poverty level wasn't going to play a part in whether or not I was an actor. That's what I do.

I've always wanted to work with Blair, and finally the timing was right. I have a tremendous amount of respect for him. I think he's a hugely underrated actor in Hollywood.

I'm a Method actor. I spent years training for the drinking and carousing I had to do in this film.

Somebody did an article in one of the newspapers saying that at that time I had the most visibility of any actor around. Kind of nice, you know, when that thing was happening.

I'm just back in line with every other actor looking for a job right now and keeping my fingers crossed.

The whole point about becoming an actor is variety and changing roles.

I've never had any illusions about being a lead actor in films, because lead actors have to be of a certain kind. Apart from the beauty of looks and figure, which I cannot claim to have, there's just a particular kind of ordinary-Joe quality that a film star needs to have.

I phoned this number and said, Please, sir, I want to be an actor.

I'm an actor. And I guess I've done so many movies I've achieved some high visibility. But a star? I guess I still think of myself as kind of a worker ant.