Top 1200 Character Actors Quotes & Sayings - Page 13

I think all the actors I've worked with knew that I was an actor. Like, I get into the dirt with my actors and we figure out the rhythm of the scene and how it needs to sound and what the blocking is, the way you would with another actor.

The process of finding an actor is always difficult and there's always so many variables that come into play. Also, actors sometimes carry baggage, fans associate actors with certain parts.

I feel that the industry can be sliced into two categories - grateful actors and non-grateful actors.

Somehow I feel South Indian actors are not that well known in the Hindi belt. Tamil and Telugu actors have an upper hand. But Kannada and Kerala are totally sidelined by Hindi filmgoers.

The script that I fell in love with and adored was 'Jane the Virgin'... but every line in the pilot was essentially, 'Why did you keep my daughter a secret all of these years?' I didn't know any direction my character was going - was it going to be a dramatic character, a comedic character? - I didn't know.

Most of my good friends are my friends from high school or childhood, and they're not actors - they have 9-to-5 jobs. But I've obviously, over time, developed friendships with actors. It's two completely different worlds.

As a director, I have to feel realism from actors, and they can't be plastic. The words for me are secondary, but the chemistry between the actors is most important. However, you have to go by the script because it's related to production, otherwise you will not finish your project.

There are no bad actors. There are only bad directors who cannot make their actors act.

In general, a film's delay is disheartening for actors, but it's harder on the director and the producer who have been on the project for longer than anyone else. While actors move on to other projects, the film's makers don't.

Writers and painters have a medium that can foster self-effacements. Actors haven't. An actor can't hide himself behind paper or canvas. If you're not there your art's not there. That's why we actors are often such self-centered objects.

The '80s were a time of technical wonder in filmmaking; unfortunately, some colleges didn't integrate their film and theater departments - so you had actors who were afraid of the camera, and directors who couldn't talk to the actors.

There are a lot of weenie American actors, and a lot of foreign actors are having the luck.

I don't rehearse with my actors... the first rehearsal is the first time we turn the camera on... Sydney Pollack never rehearsed his actors, and I found out that's allowed... so you film reactions; you don't create them.

Character is developed one positive action at a time. Therefore nothing is actually trivial in our lives. To grow in character development, pay attention to seemingly trivial matters. Someone who grows from each minor life event will eventually reach high levels of character perfection.

Chemistry's a weird thing. You can see actors who are friends in real life but have no screen chemistry. Then there are actors who don't get on but have great chemistry.

Never say any man is hopeless, because he only represents a character, a bundle of habits, which can be checked by new and better ones. Character is repeated habits, and repeated habits alone can reform character.

A lot of British actors will look at America as a land of opportunity. In England, there's such a small pool of working actors of color. There's such a small amount of work that is actually produced in the first place.

A lot of British actors will look at America as such a land of opportunity. In England, there's such a small pool of working actors of color. There's such a small amount of work that is actually produced in the first place.

A lot of critics sometimes get into analyzing the way actors direct versus non-actors directing. And they really always miss it. It's one of those things where, by not being practitioners, they just came up with something that made sense to them.

I was born Joseph Lane, but when I applied to the actors union, they said they already had a Joe Lane on the books and I'd have to change my last or first name. I had played the character of Nathan Detroit, whom I liked very much, in 'Guys and Dolls,' so I took the name Nathan.

Part of an actor's job is to actually adopt the world-view of the character she is playing and to tell the story from that vantage point. If an actor represses large aspects of their personality, they will have a severely limited range and castability. Great actors cultivate effortless access to their subpersonalities. Many acting teachers call this 'freeing your instrument.'

I think everything you do, characters I always find, have their own voices and once you establish who that character is you find a different voice. I think it's just a question of establishing that character and the voice speaks through that character.

There are so many young talented actors today whose work I respect and admire - Ryan Gosling is probably primary among them. I take inspiration from so many amazing actors.

There are so many talented actors in Chicago, I have to go see shows when I'm there. A lot of these actors, who I've seen when I'm in Chicago in theaters, are technically amazing and never have an opportunity to showcase it on a bigger medium.

Trust your actors. That's why I work with the same actors time and time again. I encourage them to change the dialogue to achieve one thing: keep the characters honest.

Audiences want Burt, John Wayne and others to go on doing the same thing forever. It's critics and the actors themselves who want actors to try different things.

Every film requires a different process. You learn about these particular actors and the particular chemistry between these actors. Recognizing when you don't need to shoot a scene because it's going to be cut anyway.

I've always been very strong minded on character-based fights and character-based action. If you take the character out of the action and you just shoot it as an action sequence, the audience starts to lose connection.

Often you find actors have big hearts; they're quite emotional people. Talking to actors who date other actors, and talking to people who deal with other actors, they often get emotionally caught up in lots of different things. They often wear their hearts on their sleeves. They feel things quite a lot - often to the nth degree, which I can imagine could make it quite difficult to date some of us. I think it's about having an emotional availability that you can kind of draw on. But I'm also searching for that. I'll be searching for the answer to that question for the rest of my life.

The way that actors talk about acting is generally quite punishing, and I think actors want to put forward the idea that they do all of this work because, you know, it's a post-De Niro world, when, largely, in fact, it's almost never true.

If you understand your character and feel like it's a collaborative process, you're more inclined to dive into the deep end and fight for your character and feel passionate about your character, and that passion comes across on screen.

You don't often get a chance to record with the other actors who are playing the characters, mainly due to the fact that you don't have to, the actors' schedules are all over the place, and it's difficult to get everyone in the same room.

Actors can be many things - vain, venal, self-serving, obnoxious, bullies - but all of the good ones are great storytellers. I wanted to watch what my actors were doing and how they were telling the story.

Actors are different. Some actors play themselves very successfully, but I come from the theater. Having done Shakespeare, we sometimes did three or four characters in the same play.

I think the actors in 'Greystoke' were amazing. They had a really good performance coach called Peter Elliott who's, of his time, one of the greatest simian performance coaches for actors.

Actors have given up their clout. Now decision making is in the hands of lighting men, designers, bankers, special-effects people. We need to cut that out and just go with the most able trained actors in the business.

A lot of actors seem to dislike typecasting these days. The funny thing is, that's a fairly recent development. It used to be that actors wanted to be typecast so audiences could remember them and identify with them.

I love working with the same actors repeatedly. That happens a lot. It's kind of inevitable, especially if you work with the same writers and directors and you start to form a company of actors. You gravitate towards each other.

I don't have a great instrument. I don't have the kind of ungodly control over my voice and body that great actors have. And I've worked with enough great actors to know that I'm not one.

I get bored at the theatre a lot because I notice that there's not always a connection between the actors. They may be technically proficient, but they're not surprising each other. I'm thrilled by actors who make choices that are surprising.

I would like to be able to be both a film actor and a stage actor - to be an American actor in the style of a lot the English actors who do films. They are these wonderful actors who can do everything.

A lot of people don't want to hire disabled actors. They think you're going to take twice as long over a shot, or they don't want have to put up a ramp for disabled access. They think, 'Why would I do that when I can just hire an able-bodied actor to play the disabled character?'

There's lots of incredible roles out there that I'd love to tackle, but there's a select group of actors I find myself gravitating towards, like Philip Seymour Hoffman or Sean Penn or Daniel Day-Lewis - real transformational actors.

There are a lot of directors out there that don't like to deal with actors, I think. Many of them have said something like, in the future they will actually manipulate the actors on their computers. But don't believe all this.

When you have really good writing, you're compelled by the actors who are in it, and you may think it's the actors or the design or the filmmaking of it, but then you're like, 'Well, the base is a really rich story that these guys have created.'

The one immutable reality of film is, no matter how wonderful the actors and the performances are, every year the actors age and grow older - Sophie Turner's Jean Grey was wonderful!

I want to aspire to something like what Denzel Washington does, which is try to find scripts written for white actors - or Jodie Foster, who reads scripts for male actors.

Even on my films, I always collaborate with the actors. That's a given. I think you need that. You need the actors to feel as much ownership of the performance and the direction of the story as you do, to get the most out of everyone's potential.

Actors want to work with you but they want you to do their thing. Actors, whom I love with a blind partiality, sometimes they want to be soloists in the symphony, not a part of the orchestra.

I love Archie. I love Jughead. I like Reggie. I think my favorite character in the show is Betty. Obviously, I can't imagine myself playing that character, but if I had to choose a character, I really love Betty.

I don’t think that actors are necessarily any more uncomfortable in their skin than anyone else. I suppose I feel more comfortable in my skin now, but you’re always playing a character, aren’t you? You tell different versions of yourself to different people and vice versa. Here, or in the photo shoot or wherever, it’s a representation of you. It’s not you-you. That’s how you get through it.

I don't think it's a prize when actors and directors or writers and actors work together more than once. You have a trust and a shorthand and a lot of times you even reach the point, where in the process, you don't even have to talk.

In Bollywood, we are told exactly what to do and how to do it and not to counter things by saying there's a better way. We make our actors feel important by paying them more. But the real deal is when you let the actors take some decisions on the sets.

I never make suggestions. I really don't. I know a lot of actors who get a part and then they dissect it and they want to change it and they want to add stuff. I'm always amazed and so impressed by actors who do that.

Television is a completely different industry now. It's just extraordinary. It's so wonderful, because there's more interesting product. It attracts the best writers and directors. And one thing that's really interesting about it is that it used to be, if you were on a big network show, like it or not, you were a household face and name. And believe it or not, not all actors like that. That's not their goal. They just like being actors. And there are so many actors that are on hit shows that I have never seen, I've never heard.

I don't get it. I just don't get it. If Art is supposed to imitate Life, why do they want all the actors to be thin? There are fat people in the world. Shouldn't there be a few of us actors to represent them?

You need as much ballast as possible to stop you from floating away; you need people around you, things going on, otherwise life is like some film where the money ran out, and there are no sets, or locations, or supporting actors, and it's just one bloke on his own staring into the camera with nothing to do and nobody to speak to, and who'd believe in this character then?

He's [Jesus] the most fascinating character in history, really - the character who's made more difference to the world than anyone since him. I daresay that Muslims would say Muhammad was that character, but I think Jesus had a sort of 600-year start on him.

Perhaps because my background is theatrical, I have a great affinity with the classics. Hamlet has always been a character of great interest to me and a character I would really love to play. Or a character in a Tennessee Williams play, maybe Tom in 'The Glass Menagerie.'

There are 100,000 actors in the Screen Actors Guild. Only 2,000 of them make more than $75,000 a year.