Quotes on Actors

Becoming an actor? If it's not a calling, don't do it. It's too hard.

If an actor knows how to milk a cow, I always know it will not be difficult to be in business with him.

Actors will say, 'My character wouldn't say that.' Who said it was your character?

Every actor looks all his life for a part that will combine his talents with his personality... 'The Odd Couple' was mine. That was the plutonium I needed. It all started happening after that.

The only line that's wrong in Shakespeare is 'holding a mirror up to nature.' You hold a magnifying glass up to nature. As an actor you just enlarge it enough so that your audience can identify with the situation. If it were a mirror, we would have no art.

I've always been terrified about being bored. I always think being bored is the worst thing. The only strategic decision I ever made as an actor was to try and make each job as different as possible.

An actor has many lives and many people within him. I know there are lots of people inside me. No one ever said I'm dull.

First off I want to thank God, because he's the one I look up to, he's graced my life with opportunities that I know are not of my hand or any other human kind. He has shown me that it's a scientific fact that gratitude reciprocates. In the words of the late (British actor) Charlie Laughton, who said, 'When you got God, you got a friend and that friend is you.'

Remember this practical piece of advice: Never come into the theatre with mud on your feet. Leave your dust and dirt outside. Check your little worries, squabbles, petty difficulties with your outside clothing - all the things that ruin your life and draw your attention away from your art - at the door.

The challenge for me as an actor is if you become a celebrity, you don't meet strangers anymore. And strangers are where we have our anonymity. And I believe it's essential for the soul to be anonymous, especially if you're going to be an actor.

In Paris, everybody wants to be an actor; nobody is content to be a spectator.

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.

As you get older and ease your way into being a character actor you have to be comfortable with where you are in life and career, and I'm very comfortable with what I'm doing - working on projects I'm proud of.

I'm a Method actor. I spent years training for the drinking and carousing I had to do in this film.

Some actors, I think, want to feel that they are as creative as the writer. And the answer is, frankly, they're not.

From a Buddhist point of view, emotions are not real. As an actor, I manufacture emotions. They're a sense of play. But real life is the same. We're just not aware of it.

Most dear actors, eat no onions nor garlic, for we are to utter sweet breath.

The sound and music are 50% of the entertainment in a movie.

You can't really appreciate anonymity until you've lost it. People say that's sour grapes, but it really isn't To be able to walk down the street without people paying attention to you is a real blessing and you lose it when you become an actor.

A Fox entered the house of an actor and, rummaging through all his properties, came upon a Mask, an admirable imitation of a human head. He placed his paws on it and said, "What a beautiful head! Yet it is of no value, as it entirely lacks brains."

All great men are play actors of their own ideal.