Quotes About Acting

It's true I don't tolerate fools but then they don't tolerate me, so I am spiky. Maybe that's why I'm quite good at playing spiky elderly ladies.

I was fresh out of drama school and had no idea what I was doing. They hustled me along and Bill Cosby tolerated my rookie behavior. It was great. Once you have 'The Cosby Show' on your resume, you can keep going.

It was just expected that I would go to college. Both my parents are teachers and they tolerated acting, but I was going to go to a school of quality or bust. Which made my downshifting back to acting afterward a little difficult.

I like to be other people, not me. And when you're on the red carpet, it's like, 'Here's Tom Hardy.' I don't want to be me. That's why I play other people.

I don't think Tom Hardy has an actual voice of his own. Except maybe the one in 'The Dark Knight Rises,' as Bane.

There was the way she moved and the way she looked at people and the way she'd turned herself into Nobbie Wainwright on the way Aiaia. She'd been playing a governess when we met her, but that wasn't what she was.

Lately I did a film called All I Want for Christmas and it was well received. This gave me a new point of view and a new respect for my work as an actress.

It's not that I don't want to become famous or that I'm obsessed by my work as an actress, but it's all about not limiting myself, such as putting myself in a little jail that I can escape from.

American actors are taught to have objectives—what does your character want from the other character? That is business. When I deal with other people, I don't want something from them; I want a rapport. Some people say that's an objective—it's not—it's a sensation of well-being. Life is not constantly about wanting to get something from somebody else. Life is about pleasure." I hope, dear Irene, that you are in a sensation of well-being

The man has more masks than a whole troupe of Italian players.

The reason I started writing movies was because I kept getting parts that I just kind of stepped into. I didn't have to do a lot of work and I ended up getting sort of bored.

Too often I see performances that aren't rooted in truth. Oftentimes, those are performances that tend to win awards.

Duke was not what you would call a natural actor, but he learned. And when he learned, he mastered one of the hardest things of all - to act natural. And he does it so well that a lot of people still don't know he's acting. - Paul Fix

It takes intelligence to act dumb.

When it's time to film and to actually take on the role of Precious, I felt an immense responsibility to do it justice.

I was an English major at UCLA when I was 18, and then I left after a year to start acting. I was educating myself during that time.

I'm a performer. I've just been one since I was a little girl. I used to pretend all the time.

I played a role. That is what actors do. But I played it too well. I went too far. And by the time I wanted to stop, to take a bow and leave the stage, it was too late.

Any time you get to dig deeper into your character, you welcome it, especially on a TV show.

Every time you get a script and you have a scene, you start mining out how many layers there are within it.

My mother died when I was young, and I was filming all the time. I was all over the place. Acting was the one constant.

Every time you play a bad girl or guy in a movie, you really come from a place of pain.

It took me a long time to figure out how to act, and how to conduct myself in the business so I could get what I felt I needed to support my potential and give them what they wanted.

I'm most at home on the stage. I was carried onstage for the first time when I was six months old.