Quotes About Acting

Every now and then, people will recognize me at restaurants or Universal Studios or something. I'll always take a picture with them if they want. I mean, that's what telling stories and acting for a living are for - for the people.

If you're good enough to play a role with emotion and universal human elements, then you'll get others coming to you.

Acting and philanthropy are braided together. I've tried to seek out things that speak not just specifically to the community that created me, but that speak in a way that's universal and all of humanity celebrates.

I love film, and I would love to be a part of something that people universally love as a piece of film. Sure. Of course I would. And I would love to take acting lessons, and see that side of it someday. But I'm a musician.

You can't think about how people will perceive you or your character. All you can do is focus on your work. The rest is up to the universe. I've been acting for 16 years. I've done 55 movies and, in all seriousness, there's maybe five that are good and the rest are crap.

What I'm interested in as an actor is exploring universes that I have not come across before. It's interesting to me to be able to discover new things. I do like fantasies, and I like when film is inspiring and it puts creative ideas into the minds of the audience.

I go to universities to talk to the students and teach them how to watch movies. Movies have so many elements - acting, music, art direction, costumes. I also tell them not to watch pirated movies. At the cinema, they can enjoy the big screen and the surround sound.

I had always been the theater nerd at Northwestern University. I knew I wanted to do acting, but I hated the idea of being this cliche - a girl from L.A. who decides to be an actress. I wanted more than that, and I had always loved politics, so I ended up changing my major completely, and double-majoring in theater and international relations.

I studied acting at Boston University. I was in the theater department there. Somewhere in there I decided that wasn't what I was going to do and I went to the B.F.A. film program at N.Y.U.

It was only after university that I said to myself that I had to take the risk and have a serious go at acting. It's such a bizarre profession, because you have to be totally tough to deal with all those times when you're being turned down, and then really soft in order to access your character's emotions.

I had always been the theater nerd at Northwestern University. I knew I wanted to do acting, but I hated the idea of being this cliche - a girl from L.A. who decides to be an actress.

I went to Brunel University and very much wanted to go on to do a PhD in management, but then my acting career started to take off. In those days when you switched on the box there were hardly any brown or black faces.

You know, I didn't get to go to university because I've been acting since I was a kid.

I got a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree at the Catholic University of America in D.C. and started working as an understudy at the Arena.

I really started dreaming... and broke out of my shyness when I got to Howard University. My first acting class was an Intro to Acting class with Professor Bay, who really broke me out of my shell, encouraged me to follow my dreams and make them a reality.

I studied drama at the Queensland University of Technology, which was amazing. I can't speak highly enough of that school.

I did a lot of acting at school and university, then I went to drama school. It was quite a normal route.

I think my parents were happy that I'd gone to university and gotten a degree in history so they thought, 'Well if acting doesn't work for him, he can always become a history teacher or something.' Fortunately, the acting worked out.

Then I went off to Southern Methodist University in Dallas. They had a really wonderful theatre department.

I think because of my background - I went through university and did an academic career and fell into acting - I've never had a game plan for my career because I got into it quite ad hoc.

I started acting at the University of Michigan in my sophomore year.

I went to drama school at New York University.

I played Big Mama in 'Cat on a Hot Tin Roof' when I was 20 years old at the University of Michigan.

I really was a terrible actor. I did it for years in my twenties because it was like being at university again.