Top 1200 Actor Quotes & Sayings - Page 2

Every director is always directing around the play. If you have an actor who really doesn't get the character well enough, you have to direct the play around that character. You have to make choices with that actor. If you have an actor that really doesn't get the role and has certain visions of the role, sometimes you have to direct around that actor.

It used to be that you kind of got pigeonholed into one thing - you're either a stage actor or a TV actor or a movie actor. Today, there's a lot of crossover with film actors doing television, which never happened before, so those lines are a little bit more blurred than they used to be.

I can't remember life before I was an actor. In fact, I was an actor before I knew what it was to be an actor.

When I'm in Los Angeles, sometimes I hesitate saying that I'm an actor because people are like, 'Of course you are.' And I'm like 'No,' not, 'Of course I am.' In L.A., being an actor is like a pastime: everybody there is like, 'I was on this reality show; I'm an actor.' It becomes a word that is loosely thrown around.

I've always felt it's the directors purview to say what; it's the actor's purview to say how. It's not good for an actor to have the big picture in mind - it bollocks you up. An actor's purview is the tiny little... We measure our performance in seconds.

I thought for a minute about an actor and a musician simultaneously, but I think that's always very loaded as an actor when you become a "slash," and you do an actor "slash" anything. You better be really, really good at it.

If I was offered the choice of an award for best actor or best supporting actor, I would go for supporting actor.

I'm an actor. I've always been an actor. I've always approached all my comedy as an actor. I don't really care about jokes either. I tire of jokes.

I'm very grateful that I'm the kind of actor where I'm not some character actor. I can't disappear into a world.

I think I am a good actor myself. If I wasn't a director, I would have been an actor.

To grasp the full significance of life is the actor's duty; to interpret it his problem; and to express it his dedication. Being an actor is the loneliest thing in the world. You are all alone with your concentration and imagination, and that's all you have. Being a good actor isn't easy. Being a man is even harder. I want to be both before I'm done.

Very occasionally I hire an actor and get it wrong. The actor just doesn't trust the process or me as fully as I thought they would. In this case, you can be quite sure that if an actor is untrusting, it's got nothing to do with me or the process.

I'm Irish and very proud of being Irish, but as an actor, your extraction should be secondary, really. You should be able to embody whatever character it is, wherever the character comes from. That's always been important, for me. I'm an actor who's Irish, not an Irish actor.

I'm very happy to have the heritage that I do, but I'm not wanting to be 'the Latino actor.' I just want to be 'an actor.'

My experience as a young actor on network television was that I couldn't make it work. I was drowning as an actor.

I love the variety of films. In theater, you go into a room and the director runs the room, so you all work to his or her method. On film, if an actor or an actress is in for a day or two, the director has to get out of that actor what they need, so they have to change and adapt to that actor's technique.

If I weren't an actor, I would have been a bad actor because this is where I belong. This is my love and my passion.

To be a Dumont actor was considered to be a great honor for an actor, yet it also had its disadvantages.

I'm not an actor. I can show up for friends and improvise a little bit, but I'm not an actor.

A star is different, and an actor is different. But there is an actor in every star, and they, too, look for challenging roles to satisfy the actor in them.

The director is the most important because, ultimately, as an actor, when you watch a movie, it looks like an actor is giving a performance, and they kind of are. But, what's actually happening is that an actor has given a bunch of ingredients over to a director, who then constructs a performance. That's movie-making.

You suffer as an actor. It's difficult to be an actor and live a good life, especially today.

I didn't want to be a comedian. I wanted to be an actor - maybe a comic actor, but a real actor - by real, I mean not a comedian. I wanted to be an actor.

How you look is part of what acting is, but the way I look at it, every actor is a character actor. Someone once told me at a casting, 'You're a character actor in a leading man's body,' and I can live with that.

There could be some unknown actor who's a better actor than Ving Rhames, but no one knows that actor, so Ving Rhames will get the job.

For me, some of the happiest moments on a live-action film are the awkward moments. One actor says something to another actor. They didn't expect that performance from that actor; that affects their return performance.

The actor has to develop his body. The actor has to work on his voice. But the most important thing the actor has to work on is his mind.

I think, when someone say, "When did you feel like an actor?" it's those moments when I feel like, "I'm an actor, wow." That's an extraordinary moment for me. So it's not like I walk around going, "I'm an actor."

A British actor will savour every syllable of a Shakespearean line, while a French actor will drive to the end of a sentence or a speech with a propulsive rhythm: the thing you never say to a French actor is, 'Take your time.'

Only a great actor finds the difficulties of the actor's art infinite.

I wasn't a class clown, I never developed this comedic flair as a kid. Even when I decided to become an actor, it was just to be an actor, not necessarily a comedic actor. I wasn't that guy who struck out with women so he became really funny, and that's when the women started to like him.

I love to read scripts. But I am very happy right now to say that I am a working actor. In this town of Los Angeles, the phrase 'I'm an actor' is overrated. So, I like to say, 'I'm a working actor.'

Given the choice between 'actor' and 'actress,' 'actor' is a non-gendered word that I use.

I am a method actor, but I'm also a film actor as well as a method actor. Characters that don't have humility, whether they are heroes or villains, are hard to relate to. All characters in every aspect of what we do should have humility. If they don't, then they're a cartoon character.

I don't think that many people today, understand the nature of what an improv does for an actor in a specific setting. What an improv does for an actor is help him find the life; it's the life that an actor's after.

I was always a supporting actor. It is nice to know one has the equipment to be a leading actor.

I have no problem having any actor from anywhere play a role. I'm excited for any actor that gets a job, I truly am. Even if it's a role that I'm up for and I don't get it, I never begrudge any actor having it work out for them.

What we really have to do is stop the adjective before the job title — whether it's 'black actor,' a 'gay actor' or 'anything actor,' Everybody thinks that equality comes from identifying people, and that's not where equality comes from. Equality comes from treating everybody the same regardless of who they are. I hope the media and the press catches on to that because it's time to move out of 1992.

I'm not a wealthy person because I was never a star. I was a working actor and a supporting actor.

My dad had been an actor... not only had my dad been an actor, but his dad had been an actor, and my great-grandfather had been an actor. And who knows before then?

Where do I fit in? That's something I think about as an actor, especially as an actor from a minority community.

I'm not an actor. Lord knows, I'd be acting if I were an actor. What you see is what you get.

Look, I'm not odd. I'm just trying to be an actor; not a movie star, an actor.

I don't think it's necessary to be an actor to get great performances out of an actor. But I do think it helps me as a director because I know what I like as an actor, and I try to get that to the actors who I'm working with.

When there's an actor involved, the actor's talking to the director or the director's talking to the actor. But when there are not those two people interacting, it's all one person in your own mind, you have to be so extra-clear about what you need.

In fact, Salman Khan is a kind of an actor who doesn't take anyone's limelight while shooting. He is a very secure actor. He has some kind of aura around him. He is least bothered as to which actor is getting how much screen space.

The truth is, an actor's performance is the result of work by a lot more people than just the actor. When you see that character portrayed up on screen, there is the work certainly of the actor, but there's the work of the editor, there's the work of what the camera was doing. What the music was doing, all of the above.

When I'm playing as an actor, I don't want to interfere at all with the director. I'm just an actor. I'm totally respectful.

I think if an actor is not able to pronounce their own dialogues, no matter what language, you are not an actor.

As a young Maori actor, I don't want to be seen as a child star; I want to be seen as a serious actor and an actor who can change the world.

I didn't grow up really wanting to be an actor. I don't remember ever not being an actor.

When an actor comes to you and starts working with the script, the image of his character that you had in your mind gets substituted with an image of that particular actor. And this is the right way to go. An actor has to be absolutely truthful - this is the only thing required of him, apart from talent of course. It's very easy to understand: you need to absolutely believe in what you see.

You don't pay an actor to act. An actor will do that for free because we love to act. You pay an actor to wait.

An actor's performance can be improved or shaped - or ruined - by what takes you use, how long you are on the actor's face, what line you put on the other actor's face, and when do you use close-ups or wide shots or two shots.

Sometimes, as an actor - and I've witnessed this with other actors that I've worked with - you don't realize that it's not all about the actor.

I had to go in and do the work of toning [invented "historical" bits] down in order to make them fit [in Lincoln in the Bardo]. It's like if you're an actor and you're always overacting, well, you're a bad actor. But if you're an actor who subdues yourself to the extent that's necessary, then you're really acting.

I've called myself an actor - I won't say I've been an actor, but I've called myself an actor - since 1989. That's when I moved to Los Angeles.

The thing is that I'm an actor first, and in 'Once,' I was able to be a musician and a singer as well as an actor.

I don't just act, and that's really important to me. I don't want to just be an actor forever. I want to score movies. I could be an actor first, but I don't only want to be an actor.

Nothing is off the table... never for an actor. An actor is continuously looking for challenges.