Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
As an actor, when you're actually trying to embody what it would be like to just know that everyone's at your beck and call, it's quite a thing to absorb what that might be like and what that would do.
Filmmakers tell actors to adjust their body language, and the famous presence of the actor is his or her body language. That is what makes them special and a movie star. An actor's capital is his body.
But even writing the column for the 'Telegraph,' that idea of working to deadlines, which as an actor that's not something you have to do in the same way. It's excited me into wanting to do a bit more.
My father kind of encouraged me through that. Exactly,[work] not as an actor, obviously, but as someone in show business that had some success. He told me to live the impossible. "Live the impossible!"
I would love to do more acting; I really would love to do it, particularly character acting. I'm a character type of actor; I love situations where I've got a bit of room to improvise on the character.
It wasn't anything that I thought I was going to be - a singer or an actor or anything like that. I really started acting just because I loved it, and it was more from a need to act and express myself.
I kind of have an interest in all history. And I suspect it comes from being Irish - we like stories, we like telling stories, which makes a lot of us lean towards being writers or actors or directors.
My closest friends are Roger Moore, who is an actor, Sean Connery, who is an actor, Terry O'Neill, who is a photographer, Johnny Gold, who was the boss of Tramp, and Leslie Bricusse, who is a composer.
I'm certainly not one of those actors who remain in a dark place the entire time in order to be doing the scene. I sort of come in and out of it. It can be to the detriment of my performance sometimes!
With everything you do as an actor, you obviously know the full story. But the person watching it doesn't, necessarily. So, you just have to discipline yourself to wipe the slate clean as you go along.
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest' is a movie that I just find flawless. Jack Nicholson... I just saw 'The Shining' again the other day; he's so brilliant. He's such a brilliant actor, just unbelievable.
[J.F.Kennedy] is an iconic figure. And to make it even worse, he's a hero of mine. And every actor will tell you that you can't play heroes. And you can't play villains. You can only play human beings.
I try to do the same thing when I'm with young actors who are new and unsure. I try to do the same thing for them that I saw Laurence [Fishburne] and Angela [Dasset]do for all of us on Boyz n the Hood.
I've always had a flare for the dramatic. I thought about being an actor and I thought about directing, but writing truly became something I needed to do, just to stay sane. It's my over-pressure valve.
Don’t ever underestimate the power of mentoring someone, or helping some young actor, doing a favor for them, or introducing - everyone needs somebody to help them along when they’re first starting out.
I don't care if you call it AO for Adults Only, or Chopped Liver or Father Goose. Your movie will still have the stigma of being in a category that's going to be inhabited by the very worst of pictures.
As an actor, rejection is a big part of it, and I've had a lot of it. So when there's something that you really want to do, it's so great to have someone to be a part of a team as great as this team is.
[Shaquille O'Neal ] walked in and said we were hiring him, so we said, "Yes sir!" Shaq is a genuinely funny guy. He's really funny in the movie. He's not just a stunt cast- he's a genuinely funny actor.
the audience is the controlling factor in the actor's life. It is practically infallible, since there is no appeal from its verdict. It is a little like a supreme court composed of irresponsible minors.
I'm not saying that Sam J. Jones was Flash Gordon - there's no such thing. No actor can be the person, that's a bunch of crap. People pay to see an actor be himself, whether he plays Hamlet or whatever.
In the Twenties, it wasn't a remarkable thing for a singer to be an actor, or even to be involved in politics. If this is our roots, how can you blame the branches for following the course of the roots.
Any actor will tell you there's more of a schedule to doing a television show. That's why you'll notice a lot of big movie actors are doing television, and they'll tell you, it's because of the schedule
It's not like suddenly, when you become a working actor all your friends are in the same situation. I have friends who are still handing out flyers for their one-woman show and trying to make ends meet.
I would always slip away to the cinema. I always found something absolutely extraordinary about the fact that these actors were always kind of kicking hard at some new dimension they were doing on film.
Most, actually, German actors have like some speaking of French. So, the French wasn't the problem. But, I was having a problem with them doing my dialogue in English. And it wasn't a matter of fluency.
I walk the streets, take the train, it's real simple. Some actors create their own mythology: 'Oh, I'm so famous I can't go places, because I created this mythology that I'm so famous I can't go places.
I don't want to get locked into any one type of genre. I just want to constantly be working with amazing directors and amazing actors, and just always pushing the envelope on what I can do, as an actor.
There's something really special for a young person to sit in an audience and discover somebody, and it's rare to do because so much of a movie's economics are based on pre-existing actors or actresses.
Unfortunately, when you're an actor you have to act. It's not like you can sit in your living room, your bedroom, your study or whatever and act with yourself. It requires having somebody to respond to.
Basically, one of the hardest things about being an actor is getting your first break. I'm a product of nepotism. The doors were open to me. I'd done several movies before I decided what I wanted to do.
Sometimes when a movie is really alive you can see that they were just making decisions on the spot. They weren't bound to anything, they were working with ideas that the actors and situations presented.
When you're an actor, seeing yourself for the first time, you spend all your time just watching yourself and hating yourself and picking your performance apart. You say, "I look horrible. I should quit."
'Transformers' was important and defining for me because it taught me about what kinds of movies I want to make and the kind of actor I want to be, and I have a long way to go before I become that actor.
There's certainly enough writers and directors and actors who secretly aspire to make movies and films that agree with the center-right perspective, and I would argue the majority perspective in America.
The remarkable thing about Hitler was his talent for dissimulation. His formidable abilities as an actor are often overlooked. There are only very rarely situations where we can say he was being genuine.
To be honest, I would like to have worked with Peter Sellers, because when people talk about classic British actors, you talk about Lawrence Olivier, and Peter Sellers was just in the most amazing films.
I notice that a little bit at The Office, with, like, an actor: If I decided there'd be a certain way in the script, it would still seem open-ended, whereas ... if I was a man I would not have seen that.
That's really just the worst part of life really, you get bracketed somewhere and the next thing you know people are saying, 'No. No. That's not the type. Get me so and so.' I'm not a type. I'm an actor.
It's easier to be more vulnerable in a smaller environment. It's hard to expect your actors to be able to open up in that way and stay with the level of focus needed when there's so many people on stage.
I dont know how it is now but the assistant stage manager had to understudy several parts. You had to be ready to go on at any time if the actor couldnt make it to the play. I didnt think anything of it.
I always say YCDA: you can do anything. If you want to be a successful actor, you have to believe in yourself more than anything else, and dont let anybody tell you that you cannot do it because you can.
A lot of times, as an actor, especially a TV or film actor, you don't get a lot of interaction, or you don't get the feeling you are actually touching someone, or someone actually cares about what you do.
I started as an actor in the theater playing a lot of character parts, and suddenly, I found myself in this place where it felt like I was getting locked into a kind of a stereotype, and it did bother me.
I had to work with Ben Mendelsohn who's one of the great actors of our time. I had a lot of scenes with him and I was thrilled to be on the set with him; I just wanted to see how we were going to play it.
Actors have this amazing skill - we bond quite quickly but equally we move on quite quickly. There's nothing particularly cold or capricious about it - we're troubadours and lead a troubadour's lifestyle.
I love working with actors. I love to see what they're going to do. There's just something very thrilling and satisfying with being involved with something, all the way through the process [making movie].
Certainly, I was typed. But what is typing? It is a trademark, a means by which the public recognizes you. Actors work all their lives to achieve that. I got mine with just one picture. It was a blessing.
I always used to wonder why American actors were getting fat, then I made a U.S. movie. I'm seeing all the food every day, and there's lots of waiting around because making an American movie is very slow.
You can't work in the movies. Movies are all about lighting. Very few filmmakers will concentrate on the story. You get very little rehearsal time, so anything you do onscreen is a kind of speed painting.
I had great faith in Irish actors, that they'd be hip to the whole theatre thing, and they are. I had no illusions of coming over here as some kind of big shot. It's been a learning experience for me too.