Quotes About Acting

I started in movies in Mexico and started doing telenovelas in Mexico. 'American Family' was the first thing I did in English.

I think the first thing I consider is whether I like the script. Once that is done, the next thing I look for is my part in the movie. Many a times you come across good offers, but the part they are offering might not be challenging. So, I don't take up that film.

I was constantly, always and forever, trying to perform the musical 'Annie' for anyone who would listen, and I have a terrible singing voice. It was the first thing that made me think I wanted to be an actress.

There's acting, and then there's auditioning; mastering auditioning is sort of the first thing an actor really needs to nail down when he or she wants to get a part.

Everyone talks about the elusive thing with chemistry. If you have a romance on screen or anything, the first thing you have to do is become friends with the person. It's not necessarily about falling in love.

A big moment for me was when I did a play that was a new adaptation of Dostojevskij's 'Crime and Punishment,' and I played Raskolnikov. It was actually the first thing I did when I got out of acting school.

As an actor, the first thing you're taught is, 'Don't look into the camera; ignore it.'

The first thing you have to get used to in any kind of acting is the ability to make a fool of yourself. If you haven't learnt how to make a fool of yourself, you shouldn't be on the boards. That's absolutely what it's all about.

Before singing, I was acting. I was always more into acting than singing. It was the first thing I always wanted to do.

For me, the first thing that I respond to - whether it's doing a play or movie or television or anything - is just the character. Is this a guy whose shoes I want to walk in for the next 12 days or six months?

As far as acting, I just went in and just started training. It was the first thing I did right when I retired. I just went in and found class, and found people, found the right coaches that could sort of just train me along.

I'm a bigger fan of my directing than in acting. Acting is just harder. You know, not harder, per se, because directing is the hardest thing I've ever had to do. But it's harder to enjoy my work as an actor, you know.

The whole reason I did a bodybuilding show was to see how far I could push my own discipline. It was the hardest thing I've ever done. When I made the switch to acting, I was able to break that down into small, measurable goals like I did with bodybuilding.

The hardest thing about movie acting is that if you're playing a character who changes within the movie, you've got to do that, but you've got to do it out of sequence, because we never have gotten to shoot in sequence, and that's really, really tough.

The supporting thing can be harder to pop in and out of. The hardest thing is the people who have to come in and play, say, the bartender for a day - that's a lot harder than playing the lead role. You have to pop in and get it right. It's a lot of pressure to just pop in there and fit in and find your footing really fast.

I think insanity is the hardest thing to play.

To stand there and do nothing on film is probably the hardest thing to do.

As any actor will tell you, the hardest thing to do is small parts, because you focus all your attention and concentration on that small part. When you're playing the lead part, you don't have time to think about the whole of it, so you just have to steam on and get on with it.

The hardest thing to do in movies is be a day-part player. You have to go in, make your mark, and get out. There's a lot of leading actors who are not good for a lot of a movie, and then suddenly they have good moments, and they're like stepping-stones across a particularly feisty stream. They build careers out of that.

I love doing emotional scenes. As I've had a perfect life, I don't really have much to pull from. But it's really fun and not that challenging. It's almost pretty easy. The hardest thing is to try and make people laugh. That's a really hard thing.

The hardest thing about being a kid actor is just kind of separating 'this is my professional life' and 'this is my kid life.' That was always the hard part for me.

The hardest thing about 'Mulan' is to put yourself in that circumstance and to have the answer be organic, and not be acting.

I thought I was okay in my first film, and then I was really, really bad in some films. I really cringe when I see some of my scenes. There's a scene in one film where a dog is biting me; the expressions I have made should be qualified as the most over-acted scene in the history of the cinema. The dog's expressions were more real than mine.

You are preparing yourself for a scene, and the most important thing is to remain emotionally available and remain in the moment with your scene partner. You don't want to let your own self-consciousness block the flow of creativity that's coming out so that you can act and react, and play what the scene is all about.