Quotes About Acting

Acting is very physical, even when it doesn't appear to be. It's about the arc of your body's language through a film.

With any project, but especially in television, I always try to look at where the character is starting from and where he's going to end up, and try to find the biggest arc that makes it the most exciting to play.

I know straight away if there are roles I don't want to do, and I have a lot of arguments with my agents about those.

For me, playing characters is always about an energy and feeling it in your body. That's when I know that the character arrived.

I love going back on 'Arrow.' It's always fun to see friends when I go back there.

I've loved the opportunity to learn about the fashion world and appreciate it as an art form, and I look forward to my continued education, but I never want it to take over my acting.

I made my living as an actor, and I love acting, so I'm an actor. But that gets you in a lot of trouble in the art world.

Through theater and acting school, I found a way to articulate myself.

When I'm working on my characters, that's something I pay a lot of attention to: how their body works, how they move, how they articulate.

I think I have been very lucky as far as my acting career goes.

Let a play have five acts, neither more nor less.

When it's really fashionable, there's something wrong. An actor once came up to me and said, "I'm a Meth. . ." and he mumbled something. I said, "Get out of here. I don't want that around. It's too corrupt.

Acting is something I love. It's a great craft that I have a lot of respect for. But I don't think it's any greater challenge than teaching 8-year-olds or any other career. In my life, I try not to make it more important than it is and I just hope that rubs off on the people around me.

Acting is like sex: you either do it and don't talk about it, or you talk about it and don't do it.

Acting is a very personal process. It has to do with expressing your own personality, and discovering the character you're playing through your own experience - so we're all different.

The music led to the acting. But movies aren't something you can just will yourself into. Someone has to choose you, and you have to be quite fortunate to be chosen.

When we started shooting New Jack City in April of 1990, I wasn't nervous anymore; I was fucking scared. Chris Rock was, too. We had a lot of heavy, dramatic scenes to pull off and we were both feeling the pressure.

What made New Jack City work is that I showed up with zero attitude. I was a wide-eyed rookie, a sponge, trying to soak it up and willing to learn from everybody. I didn't know shit about hitting marks or character motivation—all this acting

One thing I learned on New Jack City is that when you're making a movie, the trick is to make it feel real but not be

A lot of times I'd step out of my own zone as Scotty Appleton and tell Wesley or Chris or Judd how shit really would get said in the game. Subtle little things like gestures and looks. Things I lived firsthand, things I witnessed, I was able to add that into the performances.

I was cast in 'Thor' and I'm cast as a Nordic god. If you know anything about the Nords, they don't look like me but there you go. I think that's a sign of the times for the future. I think we will see multi-level casting. I think we will see that, and I think that's good.

There's a paradox to most things in life. Acting is often dressing up in frocks and chasing your ego, but that doesn't mean you don't take it seriously.

Even though I was theatrically trained, learning to develop a character was an awesome experience.

I'd love to pop back into 'Being Human' as Adam. I love the character so much. I've never really played a character like that. I'm always playing the geek, so to play a kid who is very energetic when he wants to be, and who is always trying to get the girls, was really cool.