Quotes About Acting

I was always interested in films and thought that was the path I should go down, but I didn't start pursuing acting until I was 17.

I started out pursuing an acting career out of college when I lived in Los Angeles. When I got an entry into broadcasting, I preferred it. I liked being me, rather than dressing up to be someone else. Now I'm 30 and doing a career of my own and have been in this career for eight years.

When I first started pursuing acting professionally out of college, it was very much in my head that there would be comparisons with potentially both of my parents, and I found that pretty intimidating.

When I moved to L.A., I had no intention of really pursuing acting. I wanted to focus on stand-up. It's crazy to me that my acting career took off much faster than my stand-up career.

Acting is my career. I am pursuing it with passion.

I was in Mumbai pursuing my graduation in mass media; I was not sure what to do. I tried my hand at a couple of different things. I joined an acting school after that and eventually things fell in place.

Character acting is a much braver pursuit than a guy who runs around and intermittently clenches his jaw muscles.

Photography is a pursuit that allows you to be very hands-on with what you show people of either yourself or the art you want to make, and acting is kind of the exact opposite. You do have a modicum of creative freedom as an actor, but you're still very much a cipher for other people's art.

That's how I like to do it with actors, have them really go for it and I'll tell them when it's too much. It's always easier to bring it back then to push it further.

I believe that being an actress or being involved in a movie has to be a life experience, otherwise why go for it? I have to change me, and I have to learn things, and I have to push me and my limits. By acting, I find a freedom inside of a prison in a way.

I think I am looking as an actor to find ways to push myself into places I haven't been before as a human being.

I decided to not be so dismissive of my music in favor of my acting. Acting has been such a consistent thing for me; a lot of times in the past, I wouldn't have had the confidence with my music to really make it a part of my schedule. I would easily push it to the side, or I would easily take up time that was needed for it.

Sometimes, I remember, for action continuity or to get all warmed up for an action scene before giving a close-up or saying a dialogue, I would do push-ups. I didn't know any other way to get my body mechanism going.

Playing Isabella in 'Measure for Measure' pushed me to my limits. Janet Suzman was directing, and she was very hard on me. I went through phases of not liking her at the time, but I loved her for it in the end.

I love playing really strung out characters, and characters that are really pushed to their limits and losing their mind. I think that's wonderful. To be able to lose it, in many ways, is just great fun to do.

I tend to be a lazy actress, unless I'm pushed.

My mom pushed me to take drama class.

I love to play characters who are stuffy and nerdy who either then have a dark side or are pushed to a breaking point.

A lot of people have asked whether acting is in my genes. I don't know if anyone is born to act. And it certainly wasn't pushed on me. It was something I wanted to do.

I want to keep pushing those boundaries of acting.

On film and TV sets, they let you sit down. Theater is like pushing a boulder up a hill each night. It's a fun boulder, but it's a boulder.

I'm really proud of the roles that I've played and pushing myself to be brave enough to play them.

One of the coolest ways to start building a character is the way he moves his mouth, what part of the mouth he puts his words into, how he expresses himself, and there's a certain flavor you get with a dialect.

I'm not foreign enough to play foreigners... I have sort of a mid-Atlantic British accent that puts me in the middle of everything, so they don't know quite where to put me.