Top 1200 Famous Actor Quotes & Sayings - Page 19

I'm not that famous.

The first time I thought I should be an actor was in school. I thought, 'At least this is something for which I won't have to study.' But I've realised that an actor needs to be constantly unsure about what he's doing and about what's going on around him. The moment you think you've nailed it, you're dead.

Well, mostly I just want to be an actor. I love being an actor, and I don't want to be a spokesman for anything, I don't want to do anything crazy or fancy like that.

I'm a better actor now than I ever was, I wish I could have hurried that up, but there's no way. Anyway, I always wanted to be around for a long time. Like a European actor, I hope I live a long time and that I'm acting until I finish.

When I was about 12, I came home from middle school and told my parents I wanted to be an actor. My father didn't say it to me, but he told my mom, 'No. I'm not going to allow that. He'll starve to death.' I grew up in a small town in Illinois where being an actor was not something people did.

I've been nominated twice before as actor in a leading part. Now I'm nominated as actor in a supporting part. If I don't win, I'll just wait until I'm nominated for being in the theater during the show. Do they have one like that?

There's so much emphasis on Daniel Day-Lewis and his process, which is appropriately his own. But I was just blown away by his generosity as an actor. He's so giving as an actor that he just naturally commands the focus on set.

Why not have a motivation beyond me to get to a healthy weight? Every actor does that. We're chameleons. We change; we grow as an actor. You lose weight, you gain weight, you change your hair or whatever.

There is no more reason for a room on a stage to be a reproduction of an actual room than for an actor who plays the part of Napoleon to be Napoleon, or for an actor who plays Death in the old morality play to be dead.

On 'Old School,' I was not an actor, I was Snoop Dogg, so I came to the set with a whole different vibe, and a different crew of people. And on 'Starsky and Hutch,' I was more of an actor. I wasn't Snoop Dogg, the rapper.

Today, the paparazzi are not just photographers: everyone has a cell phone with a camera. If they see an actor, they click pictures to show it to their friends or have it on their phones and, as an actor, I don't see anything wrong with it. Having said that, there is a limit that has been crossed, but there is nothing right or wrong.

Read more. Read. Read. Read. Deeply, widely, read. Learn all kinds of subjects. The smarter you are as an actor, the better an actor you'll be.

I had a teacher in Paris, who said that if an actor forgot what it's like to play as a child he shouldn't be an actor. I've always loved being with children. It's marvellous to see the fresh ways they see the world. Watching them look at a tree or a river helps you to understand something that's very important.

I felt that for 20 years, I was wooing the people of my country and asking them to like me as an actor, and when they liked me as an actor, I told them, 'Now, you like my politics.'

I'm so blessed to have been a working actor. If they still would like to make me a superstar, I'm available, but so far, being a working actor has been great. It's taken me everywhere.

It's hard to explain why exactly, but I think that when I began writing plays, it was from an actor's point of view more than anything. I had the feeling that if you put yourself in the position of the actor on stage and write from that perspective, it would give you a certain advantage in terms of being inside of the play.

Certainly what constitutes a stage actor, what constitutes a film actor, I don't even know what that is. And both things are very accurate, in a sense. In terms of people's needs to concentrate on race, I wonder if it's completely necessary, but it's not something that is so dynamically relevant to me that I feel it should be one thing or another.

I don't have any great pickup lines. I was never an extrovert, so I always had to have someone meet me halfway. If she was interested, we'd come together, and if not ... When I became a movie actor and became well-known, it took care of itself. Maybe that's why I became an actor.

I never wanted to be an actor. I never want to be an actor. I want to be a movie star. The whole idea of having to act is too gruesome. It's too ambitious for me.

I'm not an actor because I want my picture taken. I'm an actor because I want to be part of the human exchange.

Filmmaking is not a one man show. It is not like I'm thinking something and they are expressing it. I try to pull the actor in and together we try to get the expression. It is not my thinking alone, it is our thinking. The actor also becomes a part of the thought process.

My fun as an actor and my task as an actor is to transform myself to become other people. I enjoy becoming characters but I don't enjoy becoming caricatures. The research I do is only necessary in so far as we move into other dimensions.

I have a friend who is very successful in business, and his motto is, 'Don't do what you can do. Do what only you can do.' First of all, you have to know what your specific, unique gift is and then you do that... every actor does that but every once in a while an actor plays a part that only they can play.

The critic is genius at one remove; he is not unlike an actor on the stage, and incarnates in his mind, as the actor embodies in his person, another's work; only thus does he understand art, realize it, know it; and having arrived at this, his task is done.

Once you get one actor to say yes, that leads to a second, and the third yes leads to a fourth - there's a kind of comfort zone that occurs where each actor realizes, 'You're not selling this movie on me, so if it totally doesn't work, then its not all on my head.'

The only direction I can give to an actor, a good actor who knows his skills, is, 'Here are those words. They're yours. Make them yours. Don't tell the text but be the text.' That means you have to be the emotion of the text.

I'd sort of acquired somewhat more mature perspective on what my career is and I don't...not anymore...consider fame and fortune my career. I'm not a star. I'm an actor. So in a way, what I want to do as an actor, I would consider good for my career. Does that make sense?

In the end, only a good actor stands out; if I am not a good actor, I won't stand out.

Mine is an actor's voice, not a singer's voice, but the part was written for an actor (Richard Burton), not a singer.

When I meet a good actor, I would like to be a director. When I meet a good director, I would like to be an actor. When there is a good script, I would like to be both a director and an actor. The switch is very natural, not intentional.

I think people's perception is that when you're famous, you want people to love you. That's a big part of why people become famous, because they don't just want love, they want it on a grand scale. But once you realize - and it's not a big trick to really figure it out - that it's just completely artificial, an external pumping of the ego that's never going to really help you, then it's an easy thing to step out of it. That's probably why Harrison Ford lives in Jackson Hole, Wyoming.

I have learned a lot from jazz. I compare good acting to jazz music. The more you study and prepare as an actor, the more equipped you are to live in the moment. Just like the gifted musicians in my dad's quartet, it takes a courageous actor to be free.

An actor puts himself in the hands of a director. And the director's first responsibility, obviously, is to tell the story, but the smallest thing that's not true reads on the screen. So if a director sees that an actor is not believable, he needs to help him become believable.

Contrary to the popular misconception, the actor is not necessarily a specialist in imitating or portraying what he knows about other people. On the contrary, the actor may simply be a person who's more willing than others to reveal some truths about himself.

As an actor, it filled me with joy that 'Raazi' was well-received and it gave me an identity and improved me as an actor. It was Meghna Gulzar's guidance that brought out the best in me. She is a receptive filmmaker who knows the art of extracting a performance.

As an actor, you just like to be able to play as much range. I just want to be invisible. I want to be able to be perceived as an artist as opposed to 'a black actor': that's the joy.

I think directors can be a little insensitive to how vulnerable an actor is, when he's giving a performance. Part of the job of an actor is to invite scrutiny, but with that, the people around them have to nurture that and put them in an environment where they feel safe and they feel like they can risk something.

Eventually, if your career goes higher and higher, that's just how it is, but it's a little frightening. When I was younger and I thought about being an actor, I thought of the old Hollywood style of glamour, and that was so beautiful and appealing to me. Now, if you want to be an actor, it's not the same.

My body is an object of work. That's why I think to be an actor is one of the most violent jobs. If you're a pianist, you have your piano. If you're a guitarist, you have your guitar. But if you're a dancer, or you're an actor - your instrument is your body.

The weird thing is that, with actors, filmmakers and directors, it doesn't really matter if it's Robert Downey Jr., who's one of the biggest stars in the world, when you start to work, he's a hardworking actor. At the end of the day, it doesn't matter who's a big star and who's an unknown actor from wherever. It's all about the work you do.

I don't want to infantilize the actor; I want to empower the actor. Actors can be many things, but all of the really good ones are really great storytellers, and I'm interested in that. If you're not interested in that as a director then you better be Stanley Kurbrick.

We [black actors] are more respected in Europe, because in Europe, I'm not a black actor - I'm an action star. In America, I'm a black actor.

Sometimes it's harder to play good tennis with a bad tennis player - the same way it's hard to be a good actor with a bad actor. It's just an unpleasant experience.

I want to cast correctly, and then I want them to live on screen. If I cast the wrong actor, I'm screwed. But, if I cast the right actor, it really works out. The casting process is so important.

I haven't always wanted to be an actor, no. I wasn't one of the little kids that was desperate to be an actor. I did a lot of drama and a lot of music, but it was just something for fun on the side. I was quite shy as a kid and I found a lot of freedom in performing. I never knew you could do it as a job.

As an actor you're only supposed to be a lover. I am a romantic hero though I don't like that tag. With all the hardships, problems, illness, goodness, badness, awards and money... an actor will always be a lover. And a lover makes mistakes. You'll be silly, nonsensical and stupid.

Mr. [John] Barrymore's smile was the smile of an actor who hates actors, and who knows that he is going to kill two or three before the play is over. I am not an actor-killer, but I like my Hamlets to dislike actors, if you know what I mean, and I think you don't.

When a Spanish actor does an accent, that's sexy. When Peter Sellers did a French accent in 'Pink Panther,' that's funny - he got nominated for a Golden Globe. How come whenever an Asian actor does an accent, he's stereotyping?

I don't particularly consider myself an actor. I have no training. I love doing it, but I would never consider myself to be a colleague of an actual actor. That would be stepping way up in class on my part.

I feel good cinema, be it big or small, with small actor or big actor, it always works.

There comes a point when you have to be more than an actor, and doing something else that means a lot to me has actually made me a stronger actor. It's stimulated something else in my brain and heart.

My mother and father raised their eyebrows at first when I said I wanted to be an actor because I was in this industrial city. My dad had done a bit of boxing on the side, but he was a welder first and foremost. I was 17, and I said, 'I want to be an actor.' They worried it was a waste of time.

It's the hardest thing for an actor not to speak because you take away their main tool. So for an actor, it's very frustrating and very challenging, and very few people can pull it off. Some actors can say a thousand words with just a look, and it's a unique gift.

It's incumbent upon a director, if you want to pull the best performance out of an actor, you have to really work to who they are and how they work and not just expect them to hit a mark every time. You have to be very adaptable in the approach that you use with every different actor.

Ranbir is a very intelligent actor and he is one of my favorite actor in the present generation. He is very good and he is very intense. He is doing a wonderful job and his choice of films is very good.

I put Liam at the top of the list, the male actor list, because I had just seen Schindler's List again and Michael Collins, and I was just like, 'God, what an incredible actor.'

I don't see myself as a 'black actor,' I'm just Shemar Moore the actor. I'm very proud to be black, but I'm just as much black as I am white.

If people perceive you as a good actor then they'll wish for you to be a good actor and they'll root for you when they watch you, but if you come out and you're going to clubs every night people don't root for you anymore.

When I was younger, I was almost too afraid to admit that I wanted to be an actor. I didn't know any successful actors in Kenya, so I felt like I could get away with going to college to study film more easily than I could with saying, 'I want to be an actor.' That's what I did.

So, from a very young age, my mom tells me that I wanted to be Michael J. Fox. I didn't want to be an actor. I just wanted to be Michael J. Fox for awhile. And then, I realized that he was an actor, so I pursued that.