Being a good actor isn’t easy. Being a man is even harder. I want to be both before I’m done.
I’m not as good a singer as I am an actor. So that’s why I – the stories I like so much is because I’ve been a story teller for a long time. I started as a singer and found out I didn’t have a very good voice. That’s the reason I went into acting.
There is an imperative need for the creator in every supporting actor to be able to perceive the gravity of these roles.
In many ways, education is a lousy business. Teachers are not normal economic actors; almost all of them work for less money than they might fetch in some other industry, given their skills and advanced degrees.
I like actors very much, but to marry one would be like marrying your brother. You look too much alike in the mirror.
I always had an actor within me.
Every actor has to make terrible films from time to time, but the trick is never to be terrible in them.
Whether you want to be a good actor or singer, you need to be responsible and professional – and you have to learn to work well with other people and be a team player.
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.
It’s the actors who are prepared to make fools of themselves who are usually the ones who come to mean something to the audience.
Actors get to go to these amazing worlds. In ‘Terminator,’ I was a cyborg with feelings; in ‘Avatar,’ I lived for 15 months on a fantastical planet, and in ‘Clash of the Titans,’ I get to fight a scorpion the size of a dump truck. It’s a bizarre job, but you explore yourself.
An actor entering through the door, you’ve got nothing. But if he enters through the window, you’ve got a situation.
I do know there are a lot of people who seem to be in my corner, and that’s, of course, wonderful. I’m really more interested in the nomination than in the award, because I think the nomination just puts you within a group of outstanding actors.
I fled my home town and did odd jobs, including things like re-designing old furniture, before I became an actor. Having said that, I don’t think the story of my life is in any way remarkable. What is remarkable is how acting opportunities have come my way.
I’m very social. It’s just most of my friends are not actors.
I couldn’t be a director because I couldn’t put up with the actors. I don’t have the patience. Why, I’d probably kill the actors. Not to mention some of the beautiful actresses.
I could have gone the route of a lot of these former child actors, but I didn’t want that for myself. Like I said, when I was 14 years old, I decided to quit. I didn’t ever want to do it again.
As with real families, my fictional family on ‘Life Goes On’ had its ups and downs, and as part of the fictional downers, the actors were often called to cry on cue. This absolutely terrified me, because I was a pretty happy kid who didn’t have much to cry about.
I started out as a child actor. Back then, I didn’t have a manager or company, and I couldn’t even dream of having a stylist. My mom made and bought the clothes I would wear. I think that was probably when I first got into fashion.
I watch a lot of movies. I’ve watched movies since I was a kid. My dad brought me to the theater once a week. Always – it was a must. So I think that influenced me a lot to be an actor.
The thing about film-making is I give it everything, that’s why I work so hard. I always tell young actors to take charge. It’s not that hard. Sign your own cheques, be responsible.
I’m trying to be the coach. My actors are my players. They’re doing things that I’m too cowardly to do myself.
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.
To be honest, as an actor, job security is not a trait.
I’m an actor and it happened to go my way that day.
When you’re a young actor you like to go for characters with a bit of flair, so in many films I ended up playing the weirdos. I can assure you I’m not a psycho or a criminal or a bully.
The learning curve on soaps is through the roof because it’s a three-camera setup. There’s a master and then there’s two singles. And the great thing about soaps, and soap actors will tell you, is that when you get your line wrong, they don’t re-shoot it. They just cut to the person listening.
One of my favourite actors of all time, although he doesn’t necessarily play villains, is Peter Lorre.
Theatre is an actor’s medium. An actor has little control over a film. Which is why most actors who have done theatre, and then come to films find the former more creatively satisfying.
Well, I always try to look at my characters as being better than I am. That’s one of the reasons I guess I became an actor – because you get to create a persona that’s bigger or better or more interesting than your own.
The biggest and the most important thing my mother told me is to be a good actor you first need to be a really good human being and an honest person.
Musicians are like a preacher, a teacher, an actor. You are the mediator who can transfer the energy of beautiful music to the others.
I have a sneaking suspicion that if there were a way to make movies without actors, George Lucas would do it.
When you say ‘90210,’ everyone knows what you’re talking about. So why not make use of that? And they certainly have. I think the show looks beautiful, and all the actors are doing a great job. It’s a tangled web they’ve created thus far. It’s great.
As a playwright, you are a torturer of actors and of the audience as well. You inflict things on people.
What I find sometimes that is tricky is if actors are using too much of their own life in a picture, in a scene, they get locked into a particular way to play the scene, and it lacks an immediacy.
Our demands are simple, normal, and therefore they are difficult to satisfy. All we ask is that an actor on the stage live in accordance with natural laws.
I’m not a comedian, I’m an actor.
I believe in doing roles that make me explore new terrain as an actor.
I’m used to the fact that the world views movie actors as personalities. I’m in the extremely fortunate position of making a living at something I’m passionate about. It’s all about choices. By the nature of what I do, I make a choice. I invite them in.
How can a president not be an actor?
I remember being amazed that actors had a union. I thought only coal miners had unions, or guys that worked in automobile plants. That’s an indication of how naive I was.
I was the laziest person around. Suddenly, one day, I decided to become an actor. Thank God for that whimsical decision: else, by now, I’d have been a 140-kilo, butter-chicken-bingeing hotelier.
I’m a fan of a very few actors.
As a youngster, when I was active in church, I had a lot of fun choosing and hanging massive stars and making the cribs. I was also very involved in the Christmas plays, though not as an actor, but I took joy in setting up the props.
Actors work and slave and it is the color of your hair that can determine your fate in the end.
As soon as you get two actors in a room and they’re locking eyes, they’re doing a scene.
I’m an actor, paid to act. I don’t bring personal problems to the sets. Dad taught me that.
If there’s anything unsettling to the stomach, it’s watching actors on television talk about their personal lives.
When I came to Mumbai, I knew that I am an actor but I am not a working actor. To keep this actor alive, I had to feed him, I took up the casting job so that I can run my house.
Actors are like race horses. They like to run – they don’t like to be hanging about.
Working in front of the camera keeps me alive. I couldn’t care less about actors’ trailers and food on sets and stuff like that – I just want to act.
I was the first person in the family to be an actor.
I don’t see myself as a ‘black actor,’ I’m just Shemar Moore the actor.
The hero of the ‘Peanuts’ is Charlie Brown. I play the dog that sleeps on the top of his dog box who’s a philosopher. I’m drawn to that. So I’m drawn to Barbossa as I’m drawn to Einstein, because they are outsiders, and I suppose, as a character actor, that’s the turf that you’re locked into, in a way.
