Actor Quotes
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The difference between the actor and the painter is that the actor would buy somebody a knish in order to have them watch him act.
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When I became an actor, I knew that there were only two ways of going about it - either I become an actor who has expectations, or the reverse of it.
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When I was a younger actor, I would try to keep it serious all day. But I have found, later on, that the lighter I am about things when I'm going to do a big scene that's dramatic and takes a lot out of you, the better off I am when I come to it.
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I didn't grow up wanting to become an actor at all. I wanted to be a sports trainer and I was actually an aerobics instructor.
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If you have the opportunity to meet someone as an actor, it's just great fodder for you. It's wonderful source stuff that we die for.
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My mother was an extraordinary theater actor in Canada, and when I would finish school, I would go to the theater. I would do my homework, we would have dinner there, she would do her play, and then me and my sister would go home. So I grew up in it that way.
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The trap for an actor is that you become too successful at what you're trying to do, and you can find yourself stuck there.
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Becoming an actor wasn’t a choice – it was something I was forced into. At 3, you can’t make those choices... I supported my family, and if I got fired or missed an audition, I’d be punished as if I’d messed up in school. I was starved, because they wanted to keep my weight at a certain place; my hair was bleached – that was my life. I wasn’t allowed to play with kids on my block or ride a bike or play ball, in case I got a scratch – I wasn’t even allowed to be bar mitzvahed because I couldn’t attend enough lessons.
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A screen actor is compensated in the knowledge that millions will see his performance at one time, where only hundreds will see it on the stage.
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As an actor, you can certainly, at any moment and at any time, discover 400 people who think you're stupid, fat and ugly.
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Only a madman or an actor would want to be President of the United States.
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They were all wonderful on Andy Griffith Show, but I enjoyed Andy and Don and Ron the most. Ron played little Opie so well. He really took acting seriously and worked hard to deliver his lines well. Andy was always fun and liked to tease. Don was nothing like Barney. Don was very quiet, which shows what a good actor he was.
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You don't want to bring an actor in and force them into a performance. You want their input. You want their creative thoughts.
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In that daily effort in which intelligence and passion mingle and delight each other, the absurd man discovers a discipline that will make up the greatest of his strengths. The required diligence and doggedness and lucidity thus resemble the conqueror's attitude. To create is likewise to give a shape to one's fate. For all these characters, their work defines them at least as much as it is defined by them. The actor taught us this: There is no frontier between being and appearing.
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I hope the perception is that I'm an actor, I never intended to be a movie star.
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You couldn't escape the literary atmosphere in our home. I grew up as a Britisher. I played a protagonist of every nationality in stage adaptations of Shakespeare and Brecht. I graduated from Yale. When I moved to the U.S., I realized with some amount of surprise that I was seen as an ethnic actor.
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I think every English actor is nervous of a Newcastle accent.
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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.
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It was difficult in India to find an eight year old who could play a widow. The reason for that is that most of the children in India are really exposed to Bollywood. It's commercial Indian cinema which is really over the top. To find an actor, or even a non-actor, who felt natural was difficult.
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I wanted to be a dramatic actor. I never realized I was funny until I was 20-something.
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As an actor, to be able to experiment and grow and be pushed, it's been phenomenal for me, and it's given me confidence to move forward.
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I've just never been the kind of actor that things have stayed with. I've never needed to carry a character off stage.
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I actually find in America, there's a slight snobbery about actors who go back and forth between big heavy dramas and popcorn fare. That always intrigues me, because that doesn't exist in the same way in Britain. And I imagine it would be worse. In terms of the sort of class, and the sort of snobby, slightly on the back-foot thing Britain has. But it's much more prevalent in America. I'm really intrigued by it. I don't know why that is. But I'm aiming to break down those barriers by being in a Shakespeare film and a Smurfs film within six months of each other.
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That's the best thing about being an actor. If you're in a baseball movie, you walk away knowing way more about baseball, or if you're in a sci-fi film, you learn way more about Comic-Con, and so I loved all that.
