Quotes About Acting

'Stomp the Yard' was a great film. It was a great film, great opportunity. It's the reason I live in Atlanta to this day, that film. But as far as acting goes, it wasn't very challenging. I played me.

Actors, to a certain extent, never grow up, you see. It's an extension of being out in the back yard with a stick, only you're being paid to do it. It's borderline madness.

Growing up I did commercials and things like that, but nothing serious. As I got older, my family is really hardcore into academics. They weren't wanting to necessarily support an acting career; it's a really fickle business, and it can be difficult and unstable. They were rooting for education and the whole nine yards.

I've had the acting bug since I was, like, five. But growing up, I saw how people treated me differently when they knew who my father was, even the stuff I did on the field. Sometimes I'd rush for 100 yards, and the headline would be, 'Denzel's son runs for 100 yards.' That's where the suppression of that bug came from.

I could never be anyone I've played. I am so not a detective; I can barely get 200 yards from A to B with the help of Google maps, and I am just about the least observant person on the planet, so I never notice what people look like or how they walk or if they're committing a crime in broad daylight.

Every time you get told you get a part, it's just wonderfully soothing and incredibly fantastic and healing. You have a bad day at school, you come home and get told you've got a part in something, and it's just like, 'Yeah, it's all worth it'.

I did a movie called 'Quicksand No Escape' with Donald Sutherland and Tim Matheson. I think I was maybe 5. I was really little. Yeah, it was fun. And actually, Felicity Huffman played my mom.

I love Panthro, so to play him, yeah I'm very very happy.

Oh, yeah - 'The Good Wife' was a lot of fun to do. It was a short scene I did, but Josh Charles was very nice, and Julianna Margulies was so sweet. We had a very good time.

Working on a green screen set, yeah, it's almost like reading from a novel, taking those black words and creating a world around you.

Yeah, you know, if I'm having an emotional scene I do like to go off and be by myself; not to say that I'm a method actor or anything like that, but for scenes like that that are more emotional, I do like to take that night off and not be so social.

You'd think that my acting in 'Lost Angels' would have been the reason why I gave up on it. But yeah, I'm just not that good at it. Auditioning is super weird, and I'm bad at it.

I try to be a hard boiled sometimes. My kids see right through it. I'm acting. It's always, 'When I say you'll be back at 11, that means 11, not 11.15. Do you hear me!?' Then, 'Yeah, Dad.'

When I started acting, one of the first things I learned was - especially in Hollywood - was branding. I'm a tall guy. I'm like, 'Yeah, that's probably going to be my foot in the door,' because that's my impression on everybody. I'm an athletic guy, and I think, because I grew up disliking jocks so much, that became, like, the character for me.

Acting for me was hard enough without having to think of the accent. And also, when I was auditioning for stuff I would walk into the room with an Australian accent, and I would do the audition in an American accent, and they would invariably say, 'Yeah, it's that good, but I can still hear the oddity coming through.'

Yeah, I've only been acting since I was 18 out of high school.

I want to act for the rest of my life - and I also want to pursue directing. Watching Bill Condon direct 'Twilight' kind of made me think, 'OK yeah, I really want to do this now.' This idea that you can make an image in your head and be in full control of how it comes out - I thought that was really cool.

I've had to gain weight for roles and ugly myself up for roles. So yeah, I'm game. I'm game for that kind of thing. I'm certainly not too vain in that respect. If it's a great role, I'm willing to do whatever it is that it takes.

Yeah, I had actually tried to stop acting before I made Dead Man Walking.

Yeah, I started when I was 6 years old. My brother and sister would get all of these presents at Christmas time from the cast and crew of their show and I was jealous. So I decided that I had to become an actor.

Baseball player. Yeah, that was my dream before acting, or alongside acting.

Yeah, I went to ACT for a while. It was great.

Yeah, I think the common denominator - and this is probably going to sound like Acting 101 - but the common denominator is belief in the character in the moment.

Yeah, I mean the material, directors, the other cast, and if you think you can do something with the character then you do it and go from there. I am looking forward to doing some smaller movies.