Quotes About Acting

I know what it's like to have a dream. I know what it's like to roll the dice and say, 'I'm going to go after this thing,' and nothing turns my stomach quicker than acting teachers or acting schools that look at a bunch of dreamers and say, 'We can help,' when they know full well that they can't.

I thought I was signed up to be on 'Heroes.' It turns out I signed up to be on 'Survivor.'

There's a certain cruelty to being on a big screen as your eyelids start to sag and your hair falls out and turns gray that you either have to be able to handle or not. What you can't do is try to force yourself into roles that you could have played or would have played ten years earlier.

Every actor turns everything round to their character.

I never thought I had a career. I think Meryl Streep has a career. I have jobs that I am lucky to get... I'm one of those actresses who never turns down a part, no matter how small. I don't have the luxury of picking and choosing. I take everything.

I find that a lot of the good acting comes out when you're physically being pushed: your brain turns off and just deals with the situation at hand. You get to a point where you're exhausted at the end of the day, but I quite like that.

I learn from Kevin Spacey and Tom Hardy, watching these guys work, the things they all do differently. Tom never stops exploring and discovering, take after take. His mind never turns off.

Not until somebody turns round and says, 'Art, how do you fancy playing Charles Dickens? How do you fancy playing Prince Charles in this biopic?' Until those movements come, then no, we haven't got past anything.

I have to say that one person I learned from the most as an actor in my life is Emmy Rossum. She is so insanely talented in the sense that when watching her work, it just turns into watching her speak - it's no longer acting; that's how good she is! She just becomes the person.

I thought I might not want to act any more after having a baby. It turns out I still enjoy it.

It was very amusing to do 'GI Joe: Retaliation' scenes with Bruce Willis, who spends months rewriting his dialogue and then turns up and doesn't say it. Part of the time, he doesn't say anything, but mumbles and mutters.

When I'm not shooting, I go to school every day. When I am shooting, I have tutors on set helping me.

My tutors at drama school commended and criticised my use of comedy in my acting for a long time at drama school. They said I had a tendency to somehow perform the most tragic of scenes in a slightly flippant way.

I originally passed on 'Girls' because I thought TV was evil.

For me, acting was a reward. I had to get good grades in order to act, in order to be on TV. I had to do well in school so I could work. To me, it was like an after-school activity, something to look forward to.

The day after I got an agent, I got called in for a role in a TV movie called 'Legion Of Fire: Killer Ants.'

In 1977, at age ten, I was cast on the TV sitcom 'Good Times.' My character was Penny, an abused child in desperate need of love. I really didn't want to do the show. I didn't want to be away from my family.

I'm not a standup, but I play one on TV.

The Lord put me on television to do these things I want to do in the community. And He knew I had a lot to learn. That's why I've been on TV 16 years - not because I'm the greatest actress, but because I need the money.

My first exposure to TV, film, theater, the idea of what acting was, is I was a little kid, and my mom's best friend was a local casting director in Cambridge, Mass. Her name was Patty Collinge.

Actually, my favourite roles have been in theatre, but on TV, my faves were Slap Maxwell and Larry Sanders.

I find that as long as I'm acting it doesn't matter if it's for TV, or a series or a short film. I always have fun no matter what I'm doing.

I want to make a clear distinction between people who take acting seriously and people who call themselves actors because they've been on reality TV or something.

Memorising my lines is actually something I do fairly well. I look at it a few times and it is pretty much there. When your shooting on TV, they do it in such a way that it is pretty easy.