There’s a difference between playing and playing games. The former is an act of joy, the latter — an act.

I like acting, but I like filmmaking better. I went to film school. I want to make films.

I don’t think acting is addictive. If I stopped acting tomorrow, I really wouldn’t care. If you told me that I would have to sell real estate in New York City to look after my...

I’ve always wanted to play a spy, because it is the ultimate acting exercise. You are never what you seem.

If you are willing to expose your heart…being publicly private, you just may do something…

I think I know where my life went wrong. For all the world’s a stage and I’m a lousy actor!

Challenge anything that could step into your plans with the intention of acting as a resistance towards your fulfillment.

I made some mistakes in drama. I thought the drama was when actors cried. But drama is when the audience cries.

It’s a living, breathing thing, acting.

In my experience it’s not essential to get on with the person that you’re acting opposite.

British acting is undoubtedly based in text, and American acting relies more on behavior. That’s speaking very generally.

Well anything thats interesting in a film, or in a character (all your passion, your sex, your anger, your rage, all that) comes from that part of you that you want to hide and push...

I must work harder to achieve my goal of not seeking approval from those whose approval I’m not even sure is important to me.

I’ve got to see my movie to see how I’m acting, see what little things I can learn about my craft.

I thought I’d be a journalist, and only pursued acting intermittently while studying. My very first interview as a journalist was with David Usher of Moist, and he called the magazine the next day to...

It came as a great shock to me when I heard that England and Soviet Russia had become allies. So much so that I thought that the people responsible in London were acting in a...

We dress the way we think.

My basic profession is as an actor, and I have learnt much about life through working as an actor. Working as an actor is really a spiritual profession, since it means to create life on...

What I like is the acting itself. But I’m a lousy celebrity. I’m not interested in selling my private life. I take my private feelings to the work, but I want there to be a...

…teaching is, after all, a form of show business.

I’ve been chasing my music dream for a very long time and the acting dream just came up. But there are musical things I want to show the world, so that’s my next step.

I stopped acting because I had other passions I wanted to pursue.

The best way of successfully acting a part is to be it.

Why is an actor’s unintentional giggling called a ‘corpse’? It seems to me quite the opposite. It proves that he’s very much alive, and can still tell how silly this all is: him dressed up...

Maybe I can’t act, but I know the gimmicks. I studied acting all my life and know what’s good for me.

I get to meet fantastic people, and I get to go through so many emotions. For me, I have a craving for that. When I’m acting, I feel great. It’s not to be famous.

I’ll always have acting. But then if I had to choose something else it’d probably be singing or dancing – if I had to. Or maybe, like, designer, like sketching designs.

I was never a villain on the stage. I always played strong, sympathetic types. My first stage role with a speaking part, believe it or not, was as a priest. It wasn’t until I began...

It was jarring to be berated for ‘acting white’ when I was placed in a predominantly black middle school in Southern California. I was also chubby, into boys who weren’t into me, and tried too...

We made love like two shy people who acted like we’ve never acted in front of a camera before. Aside from the lead actor, I was also the producer, director, cameraman, and financier.

I had a dream about you. We were actors in a horror movie and I was hunting you down with a knife. When I finally cornered you the director yelled “Cut”…. What? I can’t be...

[To actor Strother Martin] You know, as character actors we play all kinds of sex psychos, nuts, creeps, perverts, and weirdos. And we laugh it off, saying what the hell it’s just a character. But...

I think chemistry and great acting go hand-in-hand.

It’s good to learn early that every show is a family—complete with dysfunctional relationships, tough love, and plenty of occasion for forgiveness…

For me, acting was always a way to explore emotions – to dip into the well and really try to reach rock bottom down there. That was the most exciting part of it. I hadn’t...

It’s interesting to play a role where you don’t really have to preoccupy yourself with any need to convince yourself that you’re not acting.

Once in a while I experience an emotion onstage that is so gut-wrenching, so heart-stopping, that I could weep with gratitude and joy. The feeling catches and magnifies so rapidly that it threatens to engulf...

I got into acting for the different scenarios and roles and meeting different people.

Emotions don’t interfere in my acting, nor in my life.

Some people said my acting was a cross between Euell Gibbons, Rodney Allen Rippy and Sheena, Queen of the Jungle.

Your boss takes a dim view of SEX?

Stand-up comedy is a lot about amplifying emotions and situations; movie acting has a lot to do with mellowing things down and making them subtle. The transition was almost terrifying because of the magnitude of...

My advice has always been to study the craft of acting if you want to be an actor. There are many great schools that teach acting. NYU being one of them.

Acting has always been a way for me to express myself, and show all my vulnerabilities and flaws through my characters.

I do tend to like movies that challenge me professionally. That’s mostly on a smaller scale, when you have one or two or five actors, and it’s all about the acting and not the camera.

I didn’t get into acting to have a moment, I got into it because of people who’ve inspired me, like Judi Dench, Holly Hunter, and Jodie Foster.

If my life were still a movie, this is the part that would end up on the cutting room floor. We were all just fill-ins for a long-running soap opera. The actors changed, but the...

I was going to say that writing is about disclosure and acting is about obfuscation, but that’s such a little lie. Both of them are about obfuscation and masking oneself.

If an actor’s neither talented nor handsome, what difference is there between him and any other waiter? That reminds me, my drink needs refilling.

When you really get it right in acting, it’s an act of empathy. You feel less distant from others, and that is really exciting.