Quotes on Actors

Quite frankly, I didn't become an actor to become a movie star. I have never dreamed about being the most famous person on the planet. I just want to do really good work.

Actors should arouse a sense of wonder because of their ability to exceed what the spectators can envision ever being able to do.

As an actor, there's a bit of you that's decided you want to be looked at and watched, but there's a paradoxical bit that wants to run away.

You hear about actors being late and all that sort of stuff, but you never find that with an actor who's directed, because an actor who's directed understands all the problems your production is going through.

The political world is defined by relationships rather than transactions, and by numerous actors at home and abroad with independent power. Navigating such a world is difficult and precarious.

I've dressed thousands of actors, actresses and animals, but whenever I am asked which star is my personal favorite, I answer, 'Grace Kelly.' She is a charming lady, a most gifted actress and, to me, a valued friend.

Of all the classes of men, I dislike the most those who make their livings by talking - actors, clergymen, politicians, pedagogues, and so on. .... It is almost impossible to imagine a talker who sticks to the facts. Carried away by the sound of his own voice and the applause from the groundlings, he makes inevitably the jump from logic to mere rhetoric.

When everything is added up, the frequent blows weighted against the sporadic triumphs, this is I have to say not just a vocation, it's a great gift. But you also know this, for your work, for your passion, every day is a rededication. Painters, dancers, actors, writers, filmmakers. It's the same for all of you, all of us. Every step is a first step. Every brush stroke is a test. Every scene is a lesson. Every shot is a school. So, let the learning continue.

God writes a lot of comedy... the trouble is, he's stuck with so many bad actors who don't know how to play funny.

I'd love to tell actors about all the things they don't need to worry about. Less is more. If you have it inside, you don't need to show too much. People pick up on things.

To create, I destroyed myself; I made myself external to such a degree within myself that within myself I do not exist except in an external fashion. I am the living setting in which several actors make entrances, putting on several different plays.

Movie actors earn their living and learn their craft through listening and reacting.

I'm an actor who they said was wrinkled and balding and everything else when I was in my early 30's. Most of the people who wrote that who thought they were younger than me are now bald and wrinkled.

Whenever I think of the high salaries we are paid as film actors, I think it is for the travel, the time away, and any trouble you get into through being well known. It's not for the acting, that's for sure.

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.

Some people think it is difficult to be a Christian and to laugh, but I think it's the other way around. God writes a lot of comedy, its just that he has so many bad actors.

I can talk endlessly about characters, or why someone did this or that, and what that dynamic and interaction is. I really love it, and I think that actors really respond positively to the fact that I like to talk about that stuff, because I'm not sure that all directors do.

Being an actor means asking people to look at you. I guess I accept that. But it's a profession in which the job is to show another world and other people. You may access it through bits of yourself, and your imagination and experience, but actually, in the end, you're not playing yourself.

I know what my limitations are as an actor, but my strength is putting myself into a well-written part. When I get in trouble is when I have to fix it, or when I have to carry it on personality.

I have so much empathy for these young actors that are 19 and all of a sudden they're beautiful and famous and rich. I'm like, 'Oh my God, I'd be dead.'

When we play an unaccompanied Bach suite we may compare ourselves to an actor in Shakespeare's day, creating scenery which did not exist at all, through the power of declamation and suggestion. So in Bach. There is but one voice -- and many voices have to be suggested.