Browsing Topic Best Actors Quotes

Emotional power is maybe the most valuable thing that an actor can have.

When I was a kid, if a guy got killed in a western movie I always wondered who got his horse.

An actor must interpret life, and in order to do so he must be willing to accept all experiences that life can offer.

There’s things that I can do as an actor that I couldn’t do in any other form of life and I’ve got a strange personality. But film requires strange people, so I’ve got a nice comfy home.

I don’t care if people perceive me as always selling out because I’m doing a studio picture. For me, the whole thing is you should be diverse in your choices; that’s the beauty of being an actor, you should be able to do that.

A lot of the films now are more focused on the visuals than on the actors. I think all directors should go to drama school.

I would love to play an unexpected character. Really raw and simple and not a cliche – something rugged. People like to put actors in boxes.

God writes a lot of comedy… the trouble is, he’s stuck with so many bad actors who don’t know how to play funny.

That’s probably the most boring conversation you could hear – an actor talk about politics. I won’t go there.

It occurs to me that with all the television people watch, most of their acquaintances are actors.

No actor forgets the times he couldn’t get a job. I think everyone doing this operates from that fear. You don’t want that momentum to stop when you get it

You shouldn’t speak until you know what you’re talking about. That’s why I get uncomfortable with interviews. Reporters ask me what I feel China should do about Tibet. Who cares what I think China should do? I’m a f***ing actor! They hand me a script. I act. I’m here for entertainment, basically, when you whittle everything away. I’m a grown man who puts on makeup.

I accept the Old Testament as more of an action movie: blood, car chases, evacuations, a lot of special effects, seas dividing, mass murder, adultery. The children of God are running amok, wayward. Maybe that’s why they’re so relatable.

Actors are agents of change. A film, a piece of theater, a piece of music, or a book can make a difference. It can change the world.

I’ve worked with the greatest actors, and they’re all gone. This is what’s so desperate to me.

The armoury of having any academic education does not necessarily set you up for being a good or better actor.

I would almost say that the best screen actor is the man who can do nothing extremely well.

Comedy is more difficult than drama. I think it’s really difficult to make someone laugh because people have very different comedic sensibilities. In drama, you can get away with being a great actor and surrounded by great actors and having good writing. But in comedy you have to listen and you have to perform with a certain rhythm, because if you don’t, it’s like playing a wrong note in the orchestra and you can hear the off key and it will fall flat and you won’t get that instant response.

Actors are not made, they are born.

Elizabeth Taylor is pre-feminist woman. This is the source of her continuing greatness and relevance. She wields the sexual power that feminism cannot explain and has tried to destroy. Through stars like Taylor, we sense the world-disordering impact of legendary women like Delilah, Salome, and Helen of Troy. Feminism has tried to dismiss the femme fatale as a misogynist libel, a hoary clich?. But the femme fatale expresses women’s ancient and eternal control of the sexual realm. The specter of the femme fatale stalks all men’s relations with women.

The only thing that we as actors really can control is to be able to say ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to the material.

The basic essential of a great actor is that he loves himself in acting.

I know how to be strong. I know how to be ruthless. It’s part of my nature. I wouldn’t be an actor if I wasn’t.

I started out as a writer and a director. I started acting because I wanted to know how to relate to the actors. When people ask me what I do, I don’t really say that I’m an actor, because actors often wait for someone to give them roles.

You just hope that you will get the opportunity to do what you love and pay your bills, and that is being a success as an actor.

Even when I was in the orphanage, when I was roaming the street trying to find enough to eat, even then I thought of myself as the greatest actor in the world. I had to feel the exuberance that comes from utter confidence in yourself. Without it, you go down to defeat.

There probably aren’t a lot of actors my age who tap dance.

You need to be as clean of a slate as you can be, as an actor. You have to try to be open to every experience.

The more we understand what is happening in the world, the more frustrated we often become, for our knowledge leads to feelings of powerlessness. We feel that we are living in a world in which the citizen has become a mere spectator or a forced actor, and that our personal experience is politically useless and our political will a minor illusion.

I became an actor by accident.

Obviously an actor draws on his own experience.

Movies are a fad. Audiences really want to see live actors on a stage.

Everybody always feels that they’re right even if they’re wrong and that’s what a whole actor’s career is built around rationalizing your way into whatever character you’re playing.

In my personal life I’m very conservative. I’ve been married to the same person for nearly 50 years, I’m scrupulous about paying bills, avoiding debt. I’m very careful. But as an actor I’m pretty reckless. I’ve done a lot of things that, when I see myself on screen, I have to shut my eyes. And I’ve made a whole bunch of movies that nobody sees, including me.

I’m Irish and very proud of being Irish, but as an actor, your extraction should be secondary, really. You should be able to embody whatever character it is, wherever the character comes from. That’s always been important, for me. I’m an actor who’s Irish, not an Irish actor.