Whatever you do, make sure you want to write more than you want to be a writer. Make sure you want to act more than you want to be an actor. That is what will sustain you.
I’m a Navy brat. You find that a lot of stage actors are Army or Navy brats, because they have the ability to make a big impression, make friends, and then leave just a few months later.
People assume actors are born liars, but I’d argue the actor’s job is to tell the truth. And I’ve realised I’m not a good liar.
I came into the industry as an actor. And moved on to become a star with the help of my dancing skills.
Actors walk around wearing these little tool-belts of acting skills. And I just don’t find that interesting to watch. I never want to see someone who clearly can cry at the drop of a hat. That’s so uninteresting.
I never saw myself so much as an actor. I wanted to be a cartoonist like Charles M. Schulz and create my own world and be able to have a studio at home and not commute and be able to be with my family.
Every actor and actress is possessed of the absorbing passion to create something distinctive and unique.
It’s every actor’s dream to work in a hit show on Broadway and also shoot a television show.
My mother is a professor of early childhood education. When I was two she would say she knew I was going to be an actor.
The camera, I hate it. That’s something I need to endure while working as an actor. In the end, because of fame, Gong Yoo exists. It’s the driving force that keeps me going.
A perfect weekend in London has to start on Friday night, by going to the theatre, the Donmar or the National. It’s a cliche for an actor, but I enjoy going as much as possible.
I think all actors are professional liars.
With a book I am the writer and I am also the director and I’m all of the actors and I’m the special effects guy and the lighting technician: I’m all of that. So if it’s good or bad, it’s all up to me.
Dustin Hoffman was the greatest. He had so much information to give and he mesmerized me. He really feels for actors who are just starting out and remembers his early days like they were yesterday.
I have been an actor for most of my life. When I started out, I didn’t think about anything except what was good for me. Like many movie stars, I became all wrapped up in myself.
Most actors don’t really have a director’s sensibility. They have an actor’s sensibility.
I lived in America for a long time before I started working as an actor. Some actors show up on set and have never done an American accent before, so they rely on a slew of technical mechanisms. Part of what makes an accent is understanding why people speak that way – you have to understand the culture.
The goal for me is always to have the opportunity to work in different genres. This is a great and exciting time in my career, where I can have the opportunity to work in different genres, and also I recognize there’s not a lot of actors who have that opportunity and I’m grateful for it.
I think it’s an actor’s responsibility to change every time. Not only for himself and the people he’s working with, but for the audience. If you just go out and deliver the same dish every time… it’s meat loaf again… you’d get bored. I’d get bored.
I’m a character actor.
I never wanted to be an actor. It was something I found a passion for; it wasn’t there immediately.
It’s just as important to be a good human being as it is to be a good actor.
Actors are adults playing hide-and-ego-seek.
My job, as an actor, is to give the director options. You can only hope that the takes that you thought were the best were chosen. But, then again, if I don’t watch it, I’ll never know.
A Dumont actor was considered to be too stilted – the way we Dumont actors used to speak.
Craft comes into acting later rather than sooner. I was somebody who had to learn through a process – a natural actor doesn’t need to.
When someone bestows something on you, no matter how true it is, when someone says, ‘Sexiest Man Alive,’ I’m honestly going, ‘Thank you. Right on.’ For me, it’s never canceled out anything, it’s never made me go, ‘Does this make me less talented of an actor?’
I mean, I always think when you’re an actor you have to be the guy running into the burning building rather than running out of it, if you want to make some noise as an actor.
I research every part thoroughly. I talk it out with my actor friends, but then I throw it all away when I get to the set. You have to be spontaneous.
I’ve had the opportunity to work as an actor and tell stories that transform.
Every actor comes with their own experience, method, methodology.
If you get too deep into the history, what often happens to a lot of us actors is that we become stilted. We forget that we’re reading about something that happened a hundred years ago. If we don’t put the human emotion that would naturally be in there, we end up being stilted instead of being human beings.
Show me a great actor and I’ll show you a lousy husband. Show me a great actress, and you’ve seen the devil.
An actor must interpret life, and in order to do so must be willing to accept all the experiences life has to offer. In fact, he must seek out more of life than life puts at his feet.
Sometimes ‘great acting’ is just showing off – chewing up scenery and dialogue and other actors – the equivalent of a theatrical sugar rush.
For me it came from the material. It was so well written and brought the opportunity to work with great actors. And of course the opportunity to ‘mince about’ was an added element that I wanted to take advantage of!
I had to choose between American and British actors, and it didn’t take me more than a second to decide: Russians are Europeans and should be played by other Europeans.
I learn something new everyday about myself as an actor, my capabilities, how far I can stretch myself, throw out emotions I never knew I had.
Poetry is almost like my foundation for everything. I almost feel I am a better actor and writer because of it.
My mom says that when I was a little kid, I always used to say I wanted to be an actor, but I don’t remember that.
There are no small parts. Only small actors.
I like to grow as an actor, and you can do that by playing parts that are unfamiliar to you and uncomfortable.
The only fear I have is that I will wake up one day and nobody will allow me to do films. This is a fear every actor has.
I like a movie that brings out many discussions. From my experience, every time I have done movies, they create this kind of situation. Like ‘Irreversible,’ ‘The Passion of the Christ,’ ‘Malena’; it’s so interesting. I like to explore the dark side of humanity. That’s why I’m an actor.
The ladder of success in Hollywood is usually a press agent, actor, director, producer, leading man; and you are a star if you sleep with each of them in that order. Crude, but true.
I worked in this bar called the Raincheck Room in the ’60s; it used to be over on Santa Monica Boulevard, and, y’know, it was a pretty hip place. Lots of actors hung out there.
If I’m going through life broke, I might as well live in the company of cheerful idiots like actors.
I feel respect is in your hands as an actor when portraying a character, particularly when it’s from the Indian subcontinent. I do make a conscious effort to do so and often talk to the directors especially about the heavy accent when it’s not needed.
A successful swindler has to be a great salesman even more than a great actor.
I have been working as an actor for 16-17 years now. The funny thing is I still feel awkward in communicating with the public as a star. It hasn’t been long since my drama ‘Goblin’ ended, and I’m looking forward for some time to rest.
The box office performance of a film is instrumental in an actor being perceived as saleable.
You always take a little bit back with you at the end of the day. I always put a little bit of myself into the characters, too. You find parallels, points of connection, things like that. But I’m not an actor who gets so incredibly haunted by my characters that I can’t come back.
I think I’m inspired mostly by other artists that aren’t actors, like writers or singers or artists, for being so brave.
I think we all want to find the love of our life and live our fantasies. What art student hasn’t used his art to get girls? What journalists or actors haven’t used their craft as well? It’s a very human instinct to pursue.
Currently, I work as an actor, but I still love music.
It’s well known that actors are lousy writers.
Audiences are brutally honest nowadays. If they don’t like an actor, they have all the right to write him off.
I was an ordinary student at school and, at the same time, an actor. But I was not the popular kid, which helped me to play Peter Parker better.
Do you know what White House correspondents call actors who pose as reporters? Anchors.
My favourite actor is Denzel Washington, he’s a smooth character so he could play me too!
And that if you become a star, people are going to go to see you. If you remain an actor, they’re going to go and see the story you’re in.
The real joy is in constructing a sentence. But I see myself as an actor first because writing is what you do when you are ready and acting is what you do when someone else is ready.
