It’s important for me to be free and know I’m acting for myself. I do things because I want to, and that’s important. You want to be your own person.
I’ve wanted to follow my dad into acting for as long as I can remember. ‘I’ve had a very serious round of dramatic training, and I like action films that take their characters seriously, so I figure I’m making it the best of both worlds if I try to bring some serious acting to a shoot-’em-up picture.
Leadership is the other side of the coin of loneliness, and he who is a leader must always act alone. And acting alone, accept everything alone.
Acting and making art is just something I love to do, and I love to tell stories that feel important, honest and necessary.
There is no overacting, only untrue acting.
Yeah, I think that a play is a huge commitment, and I think that what it requires of you is a lot, so it really makes you dig in and find things, and it just makes you sharp, ’cause it’s live. Really, to me, it separates the men from the boys. I always say it’s like the frontlines of acting, when you’re on stage.
If it seems like you’re doing work when you’re acting, then you’re doing something wrong.
You know, acting is very fascinating. But being an actress is not, because you become so concentrated on yourself.
Acting is not about being famous, it’s about exploring the human soul.
It’s best to keep acting real.
I actually made an effort to reject acting, to shove it out of my body, because I didn’t want my kids to have an actress as a mother-to have, like, a silly person.
For me, acting is becoming naked in front of people, you know? And when you know in the back of your mind somebody is testing you, you cannot really bare yourself. That’s a feeling I always have when I’m auditioning.
I moved in with a roommate who told me, ‘Stay with me until you can afford rent. Don’t give up.’ People who supported me were like, ‘If you don’t have money for food, I’ll cook you dinner. You don’t have money for acting class? Let’s get together and read lines.’
Comedy is acting out optimism.
No passion so effectually robs the mind of all its powers of acting and reasoning as fear.
Acting is a very big part of what human beings do. A dog is always a dog, but we’re always changing.
I’ve enjoyed all of the roles I have played for different reasons, which is the great thing about acting. You love different projects for different reasons.
Acting touches nerves you have absolutely no control over.
Because I came out as a singer, I took the time to get an acting coach.
I’m not giving up acting, I’m definitely not going to stop.
That’s what I love about acting, is playing different roles. I want to work for the character, and not make it work for me.
The pleasure from acting comes from having great writing to work with. If it’s well written and the character is interesting, then, as an actor, that’s the raw material I need.
I went to college at QUT: Queensland University of Technology. I studied for a Bachelors in finance and acting.
It’s not subtle or restrained. It’s not any of the things you like to think apply to your acting.
I am always acting, be at a party, at work or in office. My attitude changes from meeting to meeting, from being serious to intense to funny, depending on who is in the room.
I can only speak for me… but in my life, I find that, in sobriety, I feel much more, and I have much more depth. I also feel – not to segue, but as being a parent of five kids, I can bring much more to my acting, and so I’m all about anything that gives you more feeling and more depth.
The knighthood for my humanitarian work meant more than if it had been for my acting.
Being an actress isn’t as fun as it may seem. If I don’t love something, I stop doing it. I don’t love acting anymore, so I’ve stopped doing it.
A lot of people in my world – in the acting world – have either lost friends to Aids or live with HIV because its origin in our culture, in New York for instance, was in the gay community.
When you get to live your dream, with singing and dancing and acting and playing these wonderful stories, you really have already won, and you always have to remember that.
I love acting. It is so much more real than life.
I really identified with Jess, because my own dream was acting, which isn’t the most conventional profession.
With acting, you are a small part of the creative process, and sometimes it is hard to feel like you are making an impact.
The very first show I did was ‘Fame L.A.’ Everyone had talent… it was either dancing or acting or something like that. I was a singer, so I got my first role.
There’s so much more to life than that, though I think that acting is fascinating because you can forget your own sorrow as you act and become somebody else.
Acting is what I do. It’s not what I solely define myself as.
My brother’s my teacher, my mentor, and we both learnt all the acting basics from our father.
When I’m out there, it’s not even me who is doing the acting and the wrestling and the moving. It is something that I feel like I see channels more than anything else. So, for me, I tune into the right frequency. I get turned on and we’re ready for take off.
Music is a big passion of mine, and to be able to do it on the side of acting would be amazing.
‘Masoom’ was like a picnic for all of us. We kids just wanted to have fun acting in the film. We never realised when the film was completed. When we did, we realised the party was over.
Acting is just a way of making a living, the family is life.
Life’s like a play: it’s not the length, but the excellence of the acting that matters.
Acting was never planned.
I see society as something dangerous, and you have to save yourself from the rules. I think acting is the way I save myself.
I love theater work because of the immediate effect your performance has on the audience. And I love the repetition; I love getting on the same stage for more than a month and reciting the same lines, trying to make a small or large step towards an improvement in my acting.
Acting is like lying. The art of lying well. I’m paid to tell elaborate lies.
I did a lot of serious plays, and I did the Oxford Review as well, which is supposed to be funny, but I’m not sure how funny we were when we did it. Then, when I finished my course, it was only then that I decided to go to drama school and try and do acting because I was enjoying it so much and so on.
Acting is a nice childish profession – pretending you’re someone else and, at the same time, selling yourself.
When I am not acting or performing, I want to keep quiet and not to have a conversation.
I think, probably, the place that I feel I most belong is a movie set. It doesn’t matter where it is in the world or who I’m making the movie with; that’s the closest thing that I’ve got to a sense of placement. So I guess acting was a way of finding a home, if that makes sense.
I never had had a large group of friends, so I often felt a little out of place and like I was in a different mindset from everyone else around me because I was so focused on my acting career.
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.
Comedians are the monkeys of acting. When you go to the zoo, everybody loves the monkey exhibit.
Producing is the hardest of the three because there is almost no closure. Every time you solve a problem, another one pops up. Directing is second, and acting is the most fun.
Acting is the most bizarre profession. You can stay in it for years and not really be in it and be waiting for someone to give you an opportunity. It’s like when I watch ‘American Idol’ and see people who have been told to believe in themselves at all costs: It’s not always a good idea.
It’s impossible for me to be successful at what I love most, which is acting and making people laugh, without making sure my body is fueled in the right way.
Whenever I was alone while modeling overseas, I would always think about who I was and what it meant to be a human being and I personally think this is what eventually triggered my desire to act, and brought me to sign with my acting agency.
You have to strike while the iron is hot. You have to take downtime to see friends and family, but my passion is acting: pursuing those scary, challenging characters and working with passionate people.
Obviously, modeling and acting are very different. With acting, there’s just so much more to explore on an intellectual, emotional, and physical level, especially with ‘Ma.’
One of the things I like about acting is that, in a funny way, I come back to myself.
The best thing about acting is that I get to lose myself in another character and actually get paid for it… It’s a great outlet. I’m not really sure who I am – it seems I change every day.
True freedom is the capacity for acting according to one’s true character, to be altogether one’s self, to be self-determined and not subject to outside coercion.
There is nothing that living things do that cannot be understood from the point of view that they are made of atoms acting according to the laws of physics.
