Quotes About Acting

In the acting world, you can really only become good by practicing and doing it, and I just think every time you walk onto a set you just become better and better. I think I'm in a totally different space than I was back then on that first movie set.

To me, one of the things I love about being an actor is that it's never done; it's never perfect, and so it's the process. It's like practicing being okay with things not being perfect and things being outside of your control.

Remain true to yourself while practicing this business of being an actor. And it is a business.

It was a better time to be a young actor when I started out. There was a repertory system where you could go and practise.

In acting class, I used to hide in the corner and pray the teacher wouldn't call on me.

Since I started acting, I always or often find work takes precedence with me. And that is not necessarily a great rule for life.

By the time I got to the point where I was 'starring' in movies, and I had executives telling me what lines to say, that wasn't for me. I'm really not an actor. I'm a guy who comes out of comedy, and my impetus was always to rewrite the line to make it funnier, not to try to make somebody's precious words work.

One of the most precious parts of acting is the work before you show up on the set, the time you spend being with your character before you bring that character to life. To me, that's the most rewarding part of it all. It feels very good to show up on a set just knowing that's with you.

I've been fortunate, but I'm also not very precious about making sure I'm the star of a film.

Guy Pearce is very precise and clear about understanding the rhythm and the music of a scene.

Acting is many things, and one is an exercise of will. In any given scene, you're trying to find where the drama and conflict is and then deploy the actors to play at that point of conflict with precision, control, and complete will.

I don't think you can help but personalize a role. You almost play to none of the preconceived notions of it. It's more or less a personal experience and journey.

In Method acting, you can't have preconceived ideas. You have to live in the moment. You have to keep yourself open.

Once I moved to Chicago and started trying to get acting jobs, I just tended to book more things that were comedically based than anything else. I never had the preconceived notion, 'I will be a comedic actor.' I just thought, 'I'll go into acting and see what kind of work I can get.'

I really like acting in French. It's actually quite different for me, from acting in English. It's fun acting in a foreign language. You're liberated or freed from preconceptions.

The interesting thing is, when you play a real-life character or someone based in a book, you always come up against people's preconceptions of what they have in their heads.

It was really fun to work on 'The Predator.'

You can't sit here and try to predict what kind of character I'm going to be drawn to next. At the time when I read 'The Girl on the Train,' it wasn't like I was, 'Ooh, I want to play a hot mess next.'

You have to be careful so you don't make your character dull and predictable. Sometimes you have to bend the script a little... The bad guys are mostly the same on the paper... A bad guy wouldn't think of himself as bad.

I was offered a part in the stage version of 'Calendar Girls,' but the part is so predictable. It just makes me angry when I read the script.

When audience expect only humorous roles from me, my roles will become cliche and predictable.

I've never landed in a series that I could have dreamt in my life. That's why, when people say, 'Well what are roles you're dying to play?' I say, I don't even have such a list, because everything that's ever been great that I had a shot at came completely out of the blue. I could not have predicted it.

This may sound conceited, but the more predominant the role, the more comfortable I am on set.

I have often been asked why I am so fond of playing male parts. As a matter of fact, it is not male parts, but male brains that I prefer.