The actor must be full of passion. If he’s too cool he’s better off as the manager of a company, not someone who appears on the stage.

Also, painting and animation are really solitary pursuits, so the collaborative aspects of music making and acting are pretty welcome sometimes.

In life, you have to keep certain parts of yourself in check because you want to be a decent human being. But one of the guilty pleasures of acting is that sometimes you get to...

If you’re trying to learn how to act from a class, you’re analyzing the teachers’ movements and their intricacies, and it becomes like a pantomime of you wanting to be them, and that’s wrong. Literature...

All the world’s a stage,And all the men and women merely players;They have their exits and their entrances,And one man in his time plays many parts,His acts being seven ages. At first, the infant,Mewling and...

Aye, Sir. Course laid in” is a seriously sweet gig, but when I was a teenager, it sucked.

A business like acting is 90% luck. You can be a star one minute and out of work the next.

I don’t know when acting came to be more about awards than about the work. Judging who’s better than the other person shouldn’t be part of why we’re doing this job. It should be about...

I’ve always been an improviser. I was one before I knew even what the word was… And acting, that I’ve been doing since I was 5.

Some people see acting as a kind of stroll on the beach, and some people see it as a kind of skydive. And I’ve had lots of strolls on the beach in my life, so...

Character actor’ is a technical term denoting a clever stage performer who cannot act, and therefore makes an elaborate study of the disguises and stage tricks by which acting can be grotesquely simulated.

If it must be enjoyed, then it must be done. And if it must be done, then it must be done well. If it is done well, it is enjoyed well.

Any actor who tells you that they have become the people they play, unless they’re clearly diagnosed as a schizophrenic, is bullshitting you.

Dane DeHaan, certainly, is kind of the best friend I’ve made through acting, in terms of another actor. He’s fantastic.

I think if you’re half-hearted you shouldn’t go into acting.

It’s not subtle or restrained. It’s not any of the things you like to think apply to your acting.

Whether it be in acting, music, or even in dancing, I only want to do things that I truly connect to, and with my music, it’s everything that I am.

Acting is about enhancing your life, not representing something that’s missing.

If I didn’t have children I’d be a much better actress. I wouldn’t be so distracted. I could pour 100 percent of my energies into it, to promote the investigation which acting is.

My attitude goes back to my childhood. I used to audition for theatrical roles, and you can’t stand out in a room full of ambitious eight-year-old girls by acting the wallflower. I realised then that...

I wish the stage were as narrow as the wire of a tighrope dancer so that no incompetent would dare step upon it.

The thing that makes you say, “I want to do something” – that is the beginning of talent.

Even I don’t know myself… In fact, I don’t know if I really have a self at all, as I’m constantly playing different roles and pretending – not so much on stage as in real...

Absolutely not, because in acting I’ve found a domain that suits me perfectly. And that is so utterly rare.

The words of his various writing instructors and professional mentors over the years came back to him at times like these, and he found a new understanding in their advice: Writing is rewriting. The rough...

Every acting gig isn’t the same, every writing job isn’t the same, every live performance isn’t the same – the challenge is the level of difficulty or ease, and that may vary.

Success is not due to spontaneous combustion. You have to set yourself on fire.

Acting school was summer camp, and I needed concentration camp. I had so many different ideas swirling between culture and how to tie things together.

I feel I’m two people: I have my interest in acting and I have a lot of other political interests I’d like to pursue.

I’m used to American actors who have a movie career thinking television acting is beneath them.

It seemed that I performed better sober than drunk. Who knew?

I don’t belive in God. I believe in…Al Pacino.

I went to college and got my degree in acting, but because it was all theater, I really consider my first couple years on ‘Mad Men’ as amazing training for working in television and for...

Too many talented and supremely calculating politicians, including Nixon and Clinton, have destroyed their careers, or come close, by acting in ways that were obviously against their own interests.

I love just about every aspect of the filmmaking except acting. I would never be able to do that, but the rest I really enjoy.

‘Hey Dude’ was shot in Arizona, and that took me to the West Coast. We did 65 episodes. It was not a show that a ton of people saw, so it was like doing acting...

Leaders must have splendid flavour of pretending for contending situations.

No one will die because of bad acting. No one will die because you missed a cue. We’re all human beings. If mistakes are made, you figure out that you’re going to live.

Believe it or not, I kind of went into professional wrestling so I could get an avenue into acting.

My first acting experience was a non-speaking role as a robot. My costume was a cardboard box covered in tinfoil, but I was so shy I refused to go on stage.

Acting is invigorating. But I don’t analyse it too much. It’s like a dog smelling where it’s going to do its toilet in the morning.

I really identified with Jess, because my own dream was acting, which isn’t the most conventional profession.

The best author is a dead author, because he’s out of your way and you own the play. Take what he has given you and use it for what you need.

There is a perfect rout of characters in every man—and every man is like an actor’s trunk, full of strange creatures, new & old. But an actor and his trunk are two different things

Having a chance to be someone other than yourself and to act out stuff that makes people look at you, like, wow, and that’s why I love acting so much.

I didn’t choose acting. The universe did.

My first big break was ‘White Chicks.’ I had only been acting for about two years and I certainly didn’t feel like I was ready for such an opportunity. It could only be the hand...

I don’t understand’, I say,’why they care what I think, as long as I’m acting how they want me to.”You’re acting how they want you to now’, he says,’but what happens when your Abnegation-wired brain...

Then everyone leaves, and you are left, each night, to your own devices with a crowd of interesting people – most of whom you don’t know – sitting in the dark.

I moved out to L.A. to be a filmmaker or director. I didn’t even think about doing comedy or even acting. I wanted to be like Paul Thomas Anderson or Wes Anderson, but I wasn’t...