Quotes on Actor

My tendency as an actor was to correct people, was to say, 'What if we tried it this way, what about if we tried that way?' That's terrible habit for an actor, but that's a good habit for director. So I became a director.

No actor wants to play to an empty house.

As an actor, you can't just imitate someone. You have to get under her skin.

I'm not an actor because I want my picture taken. I'm an actor because I want to be part of the human exchange.

I grew as an actor just by watching Kamal Haasan acting. I had the good fortune of being able to observe Kamal Haasan from close quarters.

When I shoot, I try to feel the body and the face and the weight of the actor, because the character until that moment is only in the pages of the script. And very often, I pull from the life of my actors. I'm always curious about what these characters and these actors are hiding about their lives.

I'm very happy to have the heritage that I do, but I'm not wanting to be 'the Latino actor.' I just want to be 'an actor.'

I try not to think of myself in any category, and I don't ever really try to imagine myself competing with another actor. I just know I want to do the things that I would want to see, and I know the things that turn me on, whether it's on the stage, or it's a play or a film. I just kind of want to keep doing my own thing.

I just never want to repeat myself. I also don't want to be bored in life. The great luxury of being an actor is you get to be different people, and I would hate to be repetitive.

As an actor, you are always looking for roles that will challenge you, and when I came upon Aung San Suu Kyi, it wasn't just about that but also about stepping into the shoes of someone who means so much to millions of people.

I've spent a lot of time playing roles that didn't really challenge me. I suppose every actor feels that way.

As a kid, I was going to be a marine biologist or an actor. When I became successful as an actor, I said, 'Well, maybe I can lend a voice to this with an equal passion.' You realize how lucky we are and how destructive we've been and what little regard we have for the natural world.

It is wrong if nearly every time we hear a black or Asian actor portraying their lives they are actually speaking the words of someone who has never experienced their reality. And to effectively silence disabled people from telling their own truth on film or TV is close to criminal and will not help wider society understand their reality.

In order for me to be successful... In order to be a great artist - musician, actor, painter, whatever - you must be able to be private in public at all times. That is what we do.

Imagine trying to be a gay actor, a gay anything in modern Russia? Where to be positively oneself, to be affectionate in public with someone you love of the same gender, or to talk of that love in the hearing of anyone under 18, will put you prison?

I had convinced my father to let me pursue this career, and I passionately wanted it. And here was this conflict in me, and I hadn't shared it with my father. And it was excruciating to always have your guard up. Particularly because, being an actor, you're public and visible. I could be seen coming out of a gay bar. Who could have seen me?

When I'm a director, I look at myself the actor as a completely different person. It's somebody else up there, an actor playing a role. I keep myself out of it.

I'm not interested in using my father's death as some touch point for why I've become an actor - it's grossly opportunistic.

I have a friend who says that roles choose you at the time that you need them most, and you have to believe, as an actor, if you didn't get a part that you really, really wanted, and it went to someone else, it was because it was theirs to begin with.

As an African-American actor, a lot of our stories haven't been told.

One result of moviemaking - and a side effect of moviegoing - is familiarity. If an actor is particularly good, familiarity opens into something deeper: care, concern, identification, empathy. Yet even those concepts can feel inadequate for some actors.