Quotes About Acting

'O Brother, Where Art Thou?' was this role that utterly fell into my lap and changed my life.

As much as I can act, I don't have anything in me that yearns to be an actor - that sense of needing to be onstage, in costume, in character; that is utterly not interesting to me.

As an actor, if you're just sitting and staring and you don't know who you are in your own mind, it's vacant. And sometimes the camera is an X-ray machine, it can pick it up.

My family took a vacation to Universal Studios when I was really young. Me and my brother Richard - who's also an actor - were both really intrigued by seeing the behind-the-scenes stuff of how films are made. We kind of begged our parents to get into acting.

I met my agent when I was 10 years old on a family skiing vacation. He asked if I was interested in acting, and I had been doing school plays. A couple of years later, I called him up, and I started auditioning.

I don't act because I love doing it, I act because it's my job. At the end of the year, I gotta pay my taxes, bills, doctors, insurance, car insurance, the occasional vacation. It's a wonderful job. The upside is that it is exciting and different... the downside is that it is an extremely insecure job.

While I did not get any formal training in acting, every summer vacation, from the age of five, my father would take me to Ooty with him, and I would do films as a child star. I did over 10 films like that, and it was understood that post finishing my education, I would become an actor.

It would be a great vacation to act in a movie if I weren't directing it. But to do it while you're directing interferes with your concentration, and I wouldn't do that again.

I don't have the talent of Daniel Day-Lewis. I'm Steve Austin, so when I get to hang out and be who I am, and I live on set, it's like a paid vacation, man.

As a child I was on the sets all the time, even during vacation. Had I known I would be an actor, I'd have groomed and trained myself better.

There's something scary about acting always, because basically you do all this work in a vacuum, and then suddenly there's a lot of money spent making a film, and there's suddenly a camera here, going, 'Right? What are you gonna do?'

The first acting part I ever got was a guest spot on 'Chicago Hope' playing a security guard. I thought, 'Oh, this is going to be cool.' But a little bit later, I got a vague part on this short-lived show called 'Marshall Law' with Arsenio Hall and Sammo Hung. It was a poor man's 'Rush Hour.'

Acting is such a strange, vague profession, but my kids know it's hard labour.

It's so rare, actors who are not vain.

It's a vain craft, acting.

I had to keep reminding myself in 'Blue Valentine' that I was actually making a film.

I saw Gosling just kill it in 'Blue Valentine.' I thought he was just amazing at that, and I wouldn't mind maybe doing something like that.

More than in any other performing arts the lack of respect for acting seems to spring from the fact that every layman considers himself a valid critic.

When I was 13, I told Henry Winkler I wanted to act. He said, Do it and don't let anyone stand in your way. His validation just made it all the more true. I haven't stopped thanking him since.

I needed to take a break from acting, because I really idolized it. So I came off from it, and I went on a journey to discover my relationship with God, and I became a Christian. It really just gave me so much love and light within myself. I felt secure, like I didn't need validation from anyone else, or getting a part.

A good actor always sets you straight. If you've written a false moment and thought it was probably pretty great, the actor's gonna show you when he gets to that moment. They're the great test of the validity of the material.

I did an internship in the Silicon Valley during the Internet boom. I couldn't imagine sitting in a cubicle the rest of my life, so I gave acting a try. I would have been happy doing theater and making nothing.

But I try to play everything very authentically, even if it is an accented immigrant, Jian Yang, that I play on 'Silicon Valley.'

I learned a valuable lesson doing 'Mr. Sunshine,' which is that I didn't want to be in charge because it's too much. Being in charge and acting in every scene was just too difficult. It's like eating dinner in a moving golf cart every night.