Quotes About Acting

If I hadn't been an actress, I was thinking seriously about going into psychology. It's just really what I'm interested in: the human psyche and how we process information.

Before I got into acting, I was always interested in psychology, which I think is very common with a lot of actors because in a weird way, psychology and acting kind of seem interwoven.

If I wasn't an actor, I would probably be writing or doing something with psychology.

I went into acting as psychotherapy, and it's still a work in progress.

I spent the first 10 years of my career playing psychotic Scotsman. I'm still playing psychotic Scotsmen really, they've just become a bit funnier.

I love acting. It's the one job I know of where you can go in, go through complete catharsis - emotionally, physically sometimes and mentally - and at the end of the day say, 'See you in the pub, guys.'

I acted with Albie at Stratford-on-Avon in the 1959 season. We in the acting company tended to hang out at the pub known as the Dirty Duck.

I like to think that at the end of a show, you can just take your costume off and go to the pub.

What a costume designer does is a cross between magic and camouflage. We create the illusion of changing the actors into what they are not. We ask the public to believe that every time they see a performer on the screen, he's become a different person.

Playing Mark Antony in 'Rome' will always be a favourite of mine because he was such an outrageously big and interesting character to play. Also, the fact that we were able, with that character, to find out and present the public with a biography of that man that had not been really seen before.

People become actors because they want to hide, and it's not easy to talk about myself. I accept that a certain responsibility goes with being an actor in the public eye, but I haven't found a comfortable way to deal with it.

I'm in the public eye, so I have a responsibility as an actress to my generation. I think that's what acting's all about.

We don't have drama in public schools in France. I had never taking an acting class.

Contrary to popular belief, you don't make money as an actor in the beginning. Your publicist might cost $5000 a month, so you're losing money.

I started publicly singing when I was eight. Singing was always what I did. I never really acted.

I played Sanjay Dutt's role in 'Son of Sardar' in a Kannad film. But because roles aren't being discussed and published that much people tend to think that I am doing only negative roles.

I've been acting since second grade, telling stories, making my parents laugh here and there, so I'm hoping my 'thing' is acting. But I also make a really good bread pudding.

Certain roles for older women are aimed at certain older actresses - I'm not one of those. I've been offered any number of Puerto Rican grandmas that I've turned down.

At one point, I bought brown contacts because people told me I wasn't Latin enough to play Latin, and I'm Puerto Rican. I went and bought brown contacts just so I could go in and look more Latino... but that was something that I've dealt with in this business.

I wouldn't put myself forward to do a film like 'Changeling' if I thought I couldn't pull people into a story because of all the other ways people see me.

Because of my own insecurities about the way I look, I do sometimes sabotage the looks of my characters by making them as homely as possible. I've never done a glamour part. I'd like to some day, though I don't know if I could pull it off.

Other people have often had more faith in me than I had in myself - I never thought I could pull off Roberta Muldoon in 'The World According to Garp,' or 'Of Mice and Men's' Lennie as one of my first acting jobs.

It's funny because I'm so used to acting in English that any time I have these moments where I have to speak Russian, it definitely takes a different part of my brain to pull it off, but it's always nice and fun.

When you do a lot of acting your entire life, you see the entire set from one point of view. To have a chance to step back and pull it all together is really exciting. You want to do it all; you want to have a hand in everything.