Acting

Because I came out as a singer, I took the time to get an acting coach.

It was always part of the plan to move into acting.

There's not a day that I don't work on vocals, have vocal coaches, go to acting classes, read books.

I would be the worst acting coach ever, because I have no idea what I'm doing.

I was lucky enough, when I was younger, to have the chance to do as much as possible, and I found what I wanted to do. I did swimming, gymnastics, kickboxing and the one that took off more than the others was acting.

I think by eighth grade I knew I wanted to be an actor. I'd done church plays and stuff, but my first actual acting class was in eighth grade. I was obsessed with it.

Once I came to acting, it was almost a thing where there weren't enough hours in the day to work on stuff because I was so passionate about it.

I never consciously got into comedy. It was sort of one of those things where I was a theater student, I was acting, I was doing comedy, I was doing dramatic stuff, so it's been something that I've always done and enjoyed doing and had an instinct to be relatively good at.

I'm aiming to do what I need to do for acting and nothing more. I'm bowing down to acting.

I never really wanted to write and wanted to focus on acting.

My mom didn't ever think I would take to acting because I was a very shy, very reserved kind of child. But obviously, something changed!

Well, my brother started acting before I did.

I got a little house in East L.A. and did the gardening. I was doing some acting here and there, doing my own thing... getting back to reality.

When I initially started acting, all I wanted to do was to be in one movie. That's it. That was my goal.

Acting is really about having the courage to fail in front of people.

I'm not an acting monk or anything. I'm not, like, the most well-adjusted actor.

Juilliard definitely emphasizes the theater. They don't train - at all really - for film acting. It's mostly process-oriented, pretty much for the stage.

Something I learned in the Marine Corps that I've applied to acting is, one, taking direction, and then working with a group of people to accomplish a mission and knowing your role within that team.

Through theater and acting school, I found a way to articulate myself.

My celebrity has held steady since the day I began acting. I don't view it as celebrity. I'm just a worker.

Acting is exciting. It is different every time you do it.

Having a guy on a microphone yelling lines at you is counter to a lot of acting techniques.

I like to remind myself how hard acting is. I do parts in friends' stuff.

I mean, the acting school I went to, we did have a social experience, but you know, when it's a bunch of actors, it's everyone self-consciously having a social experience rather than just having a social experience.

I never consciously set out to be an actor. I just kind of did whatever acting I could do.

Auditioning and actually acting on a set are two different things. When you audition, you're in a room and you don't have anything to play with and you don't have anything physically in the room. Whereas on set, you have direction, you have costumes, and you have other actors to work with. It's a completely different thing.

I took acting classes in my senior year in college and I loved it.

I was a director and dialogue and acting coach.

For modelling, you have to be such a strong person in a way - or seen to be a strong person, do you know what I mean? But in acting you have to get in touch with all the vulnerability that you carry.

Modelling is only about the look. In acting, it's the feel that matters.

I could probably do a documentary on acting classes, I've taken so many.

Every couple of years - no, that's every couple of weeks - I think I'm going to give up acting.

I think my being such a nomad let me into acting. I was always having to create a new image whenever we moved.

I left the Gaiety School of Acting in Dublin in 2004, and I did five years of theater after that.

I was really into films when I was younger, but I feel like a bit of a phony sometimes - I started acting because I didn't know what else to do. I filled in all these university application forms and honestly didn't want to do any of the courses.

I was studying to be an architect, I wasn't plotting to join the movies. Films were just another career option. I took acting up with the same schoolgirl enthusiasm I had for examinations. Acting is a job and I take it very seriously.

The advice that I was always given when asking for advice about acting was that if I could imagine myself doing anything else, anything else at all, then go do that.

Earlier, I used to charge territories instead of my fees as an actor, but I realised it was better to keep the two apart. Now, I take my fees in cash, for acting, and keep the distribution thing separate.

I want to continue acting as long as I can because being on the sets is a big stress buster for me. I can't possibly think of stopping my visits to the sets because I'm old.

What I always wanted to get seen as was as a good actor, when it was the acting I was doing. When I'm writing, I want to try to be seen as a good writer.

I used to have a lot of philosophies of acting, they all fell apart over the years.

Over the years, I played with a couple of spectacular guitar players, and playing with them has made me play better than I knew how to play. I hope the same thing is true with acting.

I'm used to American actors who have a movie career thinking television acting is beneath them.

I think actors are privileged. Acting feeds you.

I see myself as a comic but the acting helps sell tickets for gigs.

Hypocrisy is not a way of getting back to the moral high ground. Pretending you're moral, saying your moral is not the same as acting morally.

A producer has to know all about everything from set-building to costumes to acting.

I learned more about acting from George Stevens in a few months than I had in my entire life up until then.

Acting touches nerves you have absolutely no control over.

I'm very aware that when one is acting in the theater, you do become kind of animal about it. And you're reliant on instincts rather than tact a lot of the time.

What's interesting about the process of acting is how often you don't know what you're doing.

I'm a geeky actor, in the way that I like the craft of acting.

I was so naive when I began acting, professionally.

Yes, I was actually an acting teacher for a while.

I like the acting. It's how I started, and I sort of feel that if I don't give it a little shot now, and I go back, then I'm pretty much done with it. I mean, at what age am I going to do it at? Although, when you see Christopher Plummer and Max von Sydow doing it, I guess the answer is 80.

I studied acting at Carnegie Tech in Pittsburgh because I figured a good comedian certainly could act.

I've always been in the middle of making my own movies, so taking acting jobs that take me away from that has been impossible.

Steven Spielberg seems to have wanted to be a director from 13. He put his dog in a certain position and made him eat at four o'clock. He liked to direct it. But, to me, directing is tedious. Especially if you're acting in it. And I'm inherently lazy.

When I audition, I understand what it takes and the insecurities that come with it. If I do anything, I put actors at ease. I used to tell directors who weren't actors, the best thing they could do was take an acting class for a couple of months. Just to understand.

When I went to acting school, the kids that got the best grades were the kids that could cry on cue. But it didn't really translate into careers for any of them, because the external is the easy part.

When I was a little kid, my parents would show me Marx Brothers' films and westerns and stuff like that. That's where all my desire to be an actor comes from and probably most of my understanding of acting comes from for sure.

I don't get acting jobs because of my looks.

I don't think I really have a talent for movie acting.

I feel I'm two people: I have my interest in acting and I have a lot of other political interests I'd like to pursue.

On a television show, precise acting isn't the order of the day.

For me writing and acting all comes out of the same place, a compulsion to review and connect to something. For me they are more similar than different.

Acting can be very selfish and all-consuming.

Television and film acting is really fun because you are working with other people and you are not completely responsible for the outcome of the project.

I had to get out of the Boston area, so I flipped a coin and said, 'Heads - Miami, tails - California. I was in my mid-20s and came out here with no training. Acting wasn't even in my mind.

Some people go to acting classes to learn. I just kind of went for the dates.

Acting was important, but it was not as important as getting an education, and I credit my parents with a lot of that.

I studied at Guildhall and did the acting course, but because I could sing a bit, I kept being cast in musicals.

Acting is what I love. I love being the chameleon, and you can't do that if you have just one physical type.

You're constantly getting rejected in acting. You get rejected more than you get hired!

Everyone has the opportunity to do a horror film. There's something great about it as an actor. You have to go to places you'd normally never go and be put in situations you would never be put into. You don't get the opportunity in a lot of films to have this kind of acting. It's an interesting challenge.

For my first acting gig, I was a hand model for a Barbie commercial that was only going to air in Asia. And I was constantly trying to get my face in the shot.

Acting has always been a way for me to express myself, and show all my vulnerabilities and flaws through my characters.

A lot of girls ask for advice on how to get into acting, and I'm kind of the worst person to ask, because it just kind of fell in my lap... I was just in the right place at the right time.

If you want to be an actor, you have to do it because you love acting, not because you want to be a celebrity.

I've been acting for 25 years, living out of suitcases on theater tours or film locations.

My grandfather talked about James Dean, they were both very much into method acting.

I dropped out of school and I never took acting classes.

I think I read films having grown up around the pre-production and post-production aspect of the filmmaking medium, a lot more than most young people who are in acting would have experienced. I do think about scripts in a different way. I can't just read a script as an actor. I don't know how to do that.

I want the Israeli government to be made accountable for its behaviour to the Palestinians, and I want the people of the U.S. to cease acting as if they don't understand what is going on.

I would like to continue making music and acting in projects that give me a lot of satisfaction.

I was able to actually combine dance and acting, which was a dream come true.

Acting is magical. Change your look and your attitude, and you can be anyone.

You have to really concentrate on piano or acting. You can't do both.

I realized that acting was something I wasn't going to be lazy about. You feel good when you do it well. It is something that can grow in you.

I've always loved acting with adults versus like the whole High School feel.

It's an acting job - acting natural.

I'd love to do acting, but it'd definitely have to be comedy. I can't do serious. It's completely beyond me.

What I like about acting is that you can be a different person every day.

Using clothes to transform was a huge part of my childhood. But also, I've been acting forever, and wardrobe changes the way you feel, so it totally indicates the character you're going to play.

I moved to Chicago and I did theater, and then I started writing and I stop acting and I did sketch. You know, I did all of the things that, if you were serious about doing television, don't do.

I've always had a day job and never been just acting.

Most of the time you spend filming a show is time you spend without the cameras on, when you're not acting.

My whole background is character acting: weird costumes, fat suits, playing men, playing animals - I've never played anyone with whom there's any overlapping Venn diagram.

I have been acting for 32 years now and I feel so lucky to be able to have done exactly what I wanted to do.

I would never have changed anything in the past. I have been acting for 32 years now and I feel so lucky to be able to have done exactly what I wanted to do.

I enjoyed acting growing up, I did musical theater. I had a secret desire to be a television and movie actress, but it wasn't something I admitted to myself that I wanted to do, I guess.

I love acting like I'm in love. It's a very positive thing.

Singing is a way of releasing an emotion that you sometimes can't portray when you're acting. And music moves your soul, so music is the source of the most intense emotions you can feel. When you hear a song and you're acting it's incredible. But when you're singing a song and you're acting it's even more incredible.

I love acting... I really do. I love crawling into another character's skin. That's something that I've always, always, always, always wanted.

My advice is to make acting your second career choice.

I wasn't even going to do acting. I don't know how it even happened, to be honest. I was going to go into psychology or something like that. Or business. And then some moment of madness took over and I decided, 'Oh, I'm gonna go to London and try to be an actor.'

I probably never would have been hired on Broadway had I not moved out to L.A. and pursued acting and film, which is sad, really.

Acting is the most communicative thing I can imagine doing.

Acting is my passion, but I like hosting shows, too.

I was new to acting before my role in 'Madrasapattinam.'

I was once so terrified of acting that I used to pretend I was ill to get out of drama.

Well, what is acting but the study of human behavior? And that's so fascinating to me.

When you're acting, you're a person. When you're modeling, you're a hanger.

In modeling, because you're the center of attention, it builds up people's egos. Sometimes people lose touch with reality. But that happens with acting, too.

I did my undergrad at Florida State, got a Bachelor's, and then I got my Masters in Acting at NYU. So I've spent a lot of time in the classroom.

I studied acting in NYU's graduate program, in which we covered everything from Ibsen and Chekov to August Wilson and David Mamet.

Acting was always a secret desire of mine when I was growing up.

Initially, it was my dream to get into RADA. Then I got in. So it became my dream to show them I wasn't half bad at acting.

Actors look for characters. If they read a well-written character, and if they think the director's not an idiot, they're going to sign up and do some acting.

My acting chops are awful.

I find any sort of acting that doesn't have any humor in it is mind-numbingly boring.

One of my favourite parts of acting is the clothes that you get to wear, because it's very important.

'Serious acting' is the kind of acting that I don't ever respond to.

It's really hard to not get put in a box when you're acting and get typecast.

A lot of actors on film sets... very often they're not paying attention to the physical world around them. I think through studying art, I've always had that awareness and that's something that I've wanted to bring in to go beyond acting... As a form of expression, they are intrinsically linked.

Acting is a sort of pressure cooker that allows the fizz to come out the top. God knows what I'd be like if I didn't have that.

As long as you have the acting chops and the desire to get inside a character, you can play anything.

For me, I've never drawn a distinction between live-action acting and performance-capture acting. It is purely a technology.

I love acting and certainly won't give it up, but it's part of a bigger canvas for me now.

I think acting really helps as a director. It's just no question, because you totally understand the acting process.

My first job when I got my equity card was acting in 14 plays back-to-back. Playing that many roles, you look for ways of differentiating the characters physically, which goes hand in hand with understanding them psychologically.

My take is that acting is acting. A performance is a performance. With performance capture, if you don't get the performance on the day, you can't enhance the performance.

The whole chameleon thing about acting. That's why I'm moving towards directing - it's a much more healthy occupation.

When I first did 'The Lord of the Rings,' I was acting on the set with the other actors, but then I had to go back and repeat the process on my own to do the physical capture on a motion capture stage.

You don't really think about 3D when you're acting. As a director, you do.

I always used to pretend to be different characters - cowboys, that sort of thing. I used to think that the Indians lived over the mountains that I could see out of my bedroom. As I grew up, I started to understand that acting was actually a craft, and there was no question about it, that was exactly what I was going to do.

My culture doesn't regard acting highly.

Not taboo - it's just that straight actors still risk their careers commercially and economically. They have to please the crowd - they're movie stars, their image is their industry. It goes beyond acting.

I don't really know if I want to do acting as a career. I really don't know what I want to do yet.

What I would say to a person who is firm in their faith and wants to go into an acting career: It is such a difficult thing to do without compromising your beliefs.

Even on the worst days I am without a doubt still happier doing this than I am doing anything else. On acting.

I talk about race a lot. It's been my work ever since I came out of acting school. But it's true that in a way talking about race is a taboo. Because so many of our debates about race have to do not with race but with what we are willing to see, what we will not see and what we don't want to see.

I never imagined being able to make money from acting - and now I can.

Why do we go around acting as though everything was friendship and reliability when basically everything everywhere is full of sudden hate and ugliness?

I still don't really think about acting that much. I just do it.

None of the characters I've played are really like me. That would be boring. That wouldn't be acting.

I am acting at university, and I have really enjoyed doing student drama.

What I love is acting, and the technical stuff does tend to slow things down.

I'm no relation to Lillian or Dorothy Gish. Not even way back. But when I first became interested in acting, I wrote a letter to Lillian Gish. She wrote back, discouraging me from entering the business.

You know, I love acting.

I've honestly been really lucky. My only jobs have been babysitting and acting.

The experience of having a child does crack you wide open. I felt like I suddenly had to rebuild the skin that I'd grown over the years before having a child. Perhaps that might be quite interesting in terms of acting.

Acting is not about being famous, it's about exploring the human soul.

Getting all dressed up and putting on fancy clothes - all of that's a great thing, but oddly, it doesn't really have a lot to do with acting most of the time.

I never felt fanboyish about acting, about actors, about movies. I'm a fanboy with music.

For me, acting is play. It's just play and it's playing make believe really, really well.

Knock wood, but I started acting professionally when I was 16, and I've always been able to support myself since then.

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

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

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

Acting is like going to the gym. You have to keep yourself in shape and concentrate on your core.

You can't generalise, of course, but there is a school of American acting where there is a kind of pride in the number of takes you can do.

I always feel that art in general and acting in particular should make the audience a little uncomfortable, to slap them and wake them up.

There's something happening in the world that didn't happen before. We are acting like one big brain.

The whole of my acting career is a bit of a mystery to me.

What drew me to acting in the first place was disguise.

Drama school, you know, I own an acting school, Actor Prepares.

Every time I've crossed to a new level of film acting, the film has been a breakthrough project.

Acting has always been my passion and will remain so.

It is so common in middle-class families to consider modelling and acting not serious.

In terms of acting, I've been acting from a very young age. I've always loved it and wanted to have a career in acting or something to do with it.

I went to Brunel University and very much wanted to go on to do a PhD in management, but then my acting career started to take off. In those days when you switched on the box there were hardly any brown or black faces.

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.

Oh, yes - being interested in acting never changes. Acting is in your blood, and of course I'll always be interested in it.

Men acquire a particular quality by constantly acting in a particular way.

Modeling is really silent acting.

Emoting songs onscreen comes naturally to me since we do emote in the studio behind the mike as well. But acting in a full-length Bollywood film is a completely different ball game.

I want to be in a more natural state while doing acting.

Though I'm getting a lot of acting offers, I'd like to enter only when I'm ready. My first love will always be music.

Acting is a total physical, emotional sensation.

It's a blessing and a curse. But it's not always the best situation to be in. As a profession, I don't recommend acting at all.

I like acting, but I like filmmaking better. I went to film school. I want to make films.

Acting must be scaled down for the screen. A drawing room is a lot smaller than a theatre auditorium.

I believe, and this is perhaps too nationalistic a view, that the American style of acting puts actors quickly in touch with each other, so that their continuous presence in a company, as in England, is not absolutely necessary.

Acting is the most demanding, painful job in the world.

I come from a theater background. I studied acting at NYU and also the Groundlings in L.A.

I had a chance to do acting again, and, I don't know, this has always been my plan of what I wanted to do.

I don't think I'd want to concentrate on just acting because I love music, and things are going really well, so I think I will always continue to make music.

I started out doing the acting, and there was always an interest in music, and then the music just took off.

I'm in a happier place because my dreams are coming true. I'm acting in feature films, and I'm travelling the world. Before, I was just broke.

It's just the acting side of things. It's not like music, where you can go out there and be independent. It's a bit more difficult to get out there on your own and be an actor. It takes time.

I was acting for years before the band, so I would like to get into that again.

I'm acting! And doing it for income! But it's for something that I love, and that's super rare.

I'm always a people watcher. They always had us do that at the University of Connecticut where I went for my training. I got my B.F.A. in Acting there.

I've been acting since I was 7, and I always knew it was what I wanted to go into.

I do tend to like movies that challenge me professionally. That's mostly on a smaller scale, when you have one or two or five actors, and it's all about the acting and not the camera.

What do I love about acting? I love traveling, meeting new people, exploring and just doing what I love.

I started as an actor, then became a theater director. I loved acting but didn't feel as confident as I needed to be, so I started directing theater, then I played in some movies, and then I felt the need to do my own stuff.

I started going to acting school when I was 14, and I would always have my own take on things.

I'd started going to acting classes at 14, played 'Medea' at 15 and really wanted to be a classical actress.