Quotes About Acting

Virtues are dispositions not only to act in particular ways, but also to feel in particular ways. To act virtuously is not, as Kant was later to think, to act against inclination; it is to act from inclination formed by the cultivation of the virtues.

I don't need much of a character in my life. I've already got one; my family knows who I am, and I don't have a reason to make an impression on the world around me unless it's in a professional context. Acting is not a personal experience; it's a job.

I think personal growth has much to do with acting ability.

Being an actor, the less people know about my personal life, the more open-minded they can be about each role I play.

When I play a gay character, I want to be as believable as possible. And when I'm playing a straight character, I also want to be as believable as possible. So the less that people know about my personal life, the more believable I can be as a character.

As an actor, you go in your own personal life and pull from your personal life, so that's what I do.

I don't choose characters with the intention of working something out in my personal life.

It's always agonising to separate my life as an actress and personal life. Just because I'm happy with my acting life doesn't mean I'm happy with my personal life. I'm always making an effort to balance between the two.

Because I don't do five films a year, people maybe think that acting is not essential to my life. But if I worked any more than I do, I'd have no personal life.

Doing funny roles is something I enjoy as I am like that in my personal life.

It's fun to be an actor and dress up, but I'm happy being me and just loving accepting my personal style.

I'm coming from the notion that acting is an art. It is not a business. It is about building characters, not about selling personalities.

That's part of the beauty of being an actress: you get to explore different facets of what it is to be a human being and what it is to explore different personalities, and actually, that's one of the things I love about it.

There's this whole list of old personalities that I can act, as corny as that sounds, or as method actor as that sounds.

One of the difficulties you run into is that acting and celebrity are so closely intertwined. People make careers out of being charismatic personalities. It's one of those things that people have come to expect from actors. Personalities that don't change from role to role. I don't want it that way.

Acting while I'm singing just kind of happened because I'm a hambone at heart, I guess. And I'm a Gemini - I've got several personalities to access as an actor.

I had an audition where Josh Brolin was pelting me with his personality. I didn't get the part.

I am not an angry guy. It's just the roles I do that impact my personality.

I act for free, but I demand a huge salary as compensation for all the annoyance of being a public personality. In that sense, I earn every dime I make.

I'm not an actor. I'm a personality.

You know, I always got offered other stuff. Not the romantic leads, obviously. But very often it's a role that's underwritten, where the character has no personality at all. And they need a character actor who can fill it in.

I want to be an actress, not a personality.

I wouldn't use the word 'scared' for my role as Hitchcock, but it was my most insecure. Taking on such a formidable, giant personality such as Hitchcock; he was one of the great geniuses of world cinema. Sheer genius.

If you're shooting a really serious, dramatic scene, personally I wouldn't want to look at the camera.