Acting quotes

“I have no standards. I do everything.”
Jon Polito

“But my first jobs were acting jobs.”
James Coburn

“There was a time when I felt I should do everything that was offered to me, you know, ride the wave.”
Christian Slater

“I love improvisation. It's quite exciting.”
Tchéky Karyo

“Actors who say they can dive inside a character are either schizophrenic or lying.”
Bruce Campbell

“I read a script and I know immediately whether that role is for me or not.”
Jennifer Coolidge

“If I have anything to offer as an actor, it's only my ability to make the person real.”
Kevin Pollak

“It's really important to stay engaged and involved in the character.”
David Ogden Stiers

“It is true that there are few plays of Shakespeare that I haven't done.”
Dame Judi Dench

“I don't think anybody can be told how to act. I think you can give advice. But you have to find your own way through it.”
Dame Judi Dench

“I definitely don't look my age. So I actively look for roles that will help people change their perception of me.”
Elijah Wood

“I have a constant sort of melancholy approach to acting that fuels me. I want to do everything.”
Sam Rockwell

“I don't think I'm very ambitious at all. But I seem to play people who have that quality.”
Catherine Keener

“As long as I have the talent and there's a demand for the old Chinese man - whether he's a philosopher, or a master, or an old-time restaurant owner, or a villain, or a so-called good guy - I will always be working.”
James Hong

“I don't think I have one iota of cynicism about acting.”
Donald Sutherland

“I wasn't really serious about acting - I was serious about baseball.”
Kurt Russell

“If he didn't get perfection he got mad at himself, no one else.”
Henry Koster On Richard Burton

“So on my screenplay, on the left-hand side of the page, I will put all the ideas that refer to the scene next to it so I have some sort of pictorial reference.”
Adrian Lyne

“Surrealism is present in most of my pictures.”
Vincente Minnelli

“It's hard enough to get any movie made, and when you take on these tough genres - and I've done it a couple times - it just makes the whole struggle more.”
Lawrence Kasdan

“I hope there's some kind of morality in all my work.”
Martin McDonagh

“All my work shares a kind of balance between black comedy and sad and despairing melancholy.”
Martin McDonagh

“I find that the most interestingly written parts happen to be the bad guys.”
Liev Schreiber

“There's a way of telling a story where the audience is so in love with the characters that they forget you're even telling a story.”
Tim Story

“The principle of acting in good faith is at the heart of decent work.”
Richard Charles Hastings Eyre