Acting Quotes

Acting is all about honesty. If you can fake that, you've got it made.

The most difficult character in comedy is that of a fool, and he must be no simpleton who plays the part.

One is obliged to do a great deal of kissing in my line of work: air kissing, [butt] kissing, kissing up, and of course actual kissing. Much like hookers, actors have to do it with people we may not like or even know.

Women are better at acting then men. Why? Because we have to be. If successfully convincing someone bigger than you are of something he doesn't want to know is a survival skill, this is how women have survived through the millennia.

Pretending is not just play. Pretending is imagined possibility. Pretending, or acting, is a very valuable life skill and we do it all the time.

Empathy is at the heart of the actor's art.

While I am overwhelmingly proud of work that I, believe me, did not do on my own, I can assure you that awards have very little bearing on my own personal happiness, my own sense of well-being and purpose in the world.

Being a celebrity has taught me to hide, but being an actor has opened my soul.

When a man plays a woman in a dress, you're halfway there. It's inherently funny. When a woman plays a man, for whatever reason, it's not that instant kind of funny.

You can be a little bit darker and rougher on the stage, partly because when you're in the theater, people have come to see you, and so they kind of know what they're in for. In television, you are sort of sneaking into people's homes. So, I think you can be a little bit darker on stage.

Acting like someone you're not is exactly what it takes to realize you're capable of more than you ever knew.

There's a rule in acting called, "Don't play the result." If you have a character who's going to end up in a certain place, don't play that until you get there. Play each scene and each beat as it comes. And that's what you do in life: You don't play the result.

Acting is merely the art of keeping a large group of people from coughing.

I love acting. It is so much more real than life.

I do not regret one professional enemy I have made. Any actor who doesn't dare to make an enemy should get out of the business.

Acting is the most minor of gifts and not a very high-class way to earn a living. After all, Shirley Temple could do it at the age of four.

Acting is not being emotional, but being able to express emotion.

We're actors - we're the opposite of people.

Talk low, talk slow, and don't talk too much.

The art of acting consists in keeping people from coughing.

The secret of acting is sincerity. If you can fake that, you've got it made.

Actors are one family over the entire world.

I love acting. It is so much more real than life.

I enjoy being a highly overpaid actor.

We're actors--we're the opposite of people.

I don't get acting jobs because of my looks.

A star on a movie set is like a time bomb. That bomb has got to be defused so people can approach it without fear.

If you get an impulse in a scene, no matter how wrong it seems, follow the impulse. It might be something and if it ain't - take two!

When I come up against a director who has a concept that I don't agree with, or maybe I just haven't thought of it or whatever, I'd be more prone to go with them than my own because I want to be out of control as an actor, I want them to have the control, otherwise it's going to become predictably my work, and that's not fun.

To grasp the full significance of life is the actor's duty, to interpret it is his problem and to express it his dedication.

If you're successful, acting is about as soft a job as anybody could ever wish for. But if you're unsuccessful it's worse than having a skin disease.

An actor is at most a poet and at least an entertainer.

Acting is the expression of a neurotic impulse � it's a bum's life. The principal benefit acting has afforded me is the money to pay for my psychoanalysis.

The only reason I'm in Hollywood is that I don't have the moral courage to refuse the money.

An actor's a guy, who if you ain't talking about him, ain't listening.

If there's anything unsettling to the stomach, it's watching actors on television talk about their personal lives.

I'll always perform, because show business is in my blood. Or maybe it's in my feet. Wherever it is, I don't think I'll ever stop.