Quotes About Acting

Stand-up is the only thing in which you actually write it, act it and direct it simultaneously, so it's actually a great theater exercise.

One of the benefits for me of starting late in this business is I realised that if acting was the only thing I could do, I would struggle, so I always wrote as well.

I remember when I was 12, talking with my friends about what we wanted to do with our lives, astronauts, forensic detectives, all these different jobs. And the only thing I could think was an actor.

I think the only thing that I really haven't done much in, and I haven't felt too attracted to, is romantic comedies.

The only thing that seemed to me I could do in such a way that no one else could was acting. I thought, I can be a doctor, but there's going to be someone else who is just as good or better. I can be a lawyer, which I still sometimes think I would love to be, but I think there's someone who can do it just as good or better.

The problem with acting is that there's really no control. You're at the behest of others.

I like playing characters in the real world.

Rehearsing a scene beds a role into you. But sometimes, if you over-rehearse it without unearthing any new meaning in it, you can suddenly forget your lines. You realise that you are on a stage, not in the real world. The scene's emotional power, and your immersion in it, disappears.

I didn't really enter into the real world until I was probably at drama school.

'She's Gotta Have It' and 'School Daze,' I really didn't know what I was doing. And the biggest indicator of that was the acting. 'Do the Right Thing' was like the first film where I really felt comfortable working with actors.

After 'Rock On!,' when I started acting, and I sang in the film, people asked me, 'What was the need to sing in your film?' and things like that. I really don't have an answer for it. In terms of what made me do it? It just felt like the right thing to do.

I don't want to be an actor or nothing but if I have to, I'll act if it's the right thing.

I want to play a role of a 24-year-old woman, not 17-year-old girls. So I have picked a couple of films like 'Butter' to show that. And it's perfectly fine not to do anything for a year if I don't find the right thing.

Mum worked as a secretary for Orson Welles for what sounded like a very miserable year. Her brother was the actor Jeremy Brett, who became famous for playing Sherlock Holmes. He was an absolutely lovely man. Very exciting and glamorous, he'd always make me feel amazing and full of confidence, like I'd picked the right thing to do in life.

In all honesty, if somebody asked me the secret of auditioning for Americans, I don't know. Often, I do what's called self-taping for America. I go over there quite a lot to sit in a room and do stuff in front of people. You feel like a performing monkey. It's bizarre.

Acting for me is like a ping-pong game. That's the secret of acting. When you have a really good actor, I always want to be as good as he is or she is.

I've been in movies with Meryl Streep, Jack Nicholson - but I was on 'The Simpsons,' and finally, in the eyes of my children, I was a star.

'The Sopranos' all came down to the writing. I wouldn't have been on for as long as I was if the writing weren't so good.

I don't know if I would have had the same career had I not done 'GoodFellas.' Probably not. Would I have been cast on 'The Sopranos?' Who knows if there would have been a 'Sopranos?'

My first love was acting. I went to Sidney Poitier films as a kid. I sat in the theater and dreamed of being an actor.

Well, first of all I'll say that I come alive best in theater.

I grew up doing musical theater.

The difference - the fundamental difference between theater acting and film acting is that film acting is disjunctive.

There was no professional theater in Cork, but still I did a lot of performing.