Actors on Acting

"First off, I choose the great roles, and if none of those come, I choose the mediocre ones, and if they don't come, I choose the roles that pay the rent. But I'll always be there, because I'm a skilled professional actor. Whether or not I've any talent is beside the point."

"Be like a duck: calm on the surface, but always paddling like the dickens underneath."

"The difference between a movie star and a movie actor is this - a movie star will say, 'How can I change the script to suit me?,' and a movie actor will say, 'How can I change me to suit the script?'"

"All an actor really has is their blind faith that they are who they say they are today, in any scene."

"I'm curious about other people. That's the essence of my acting. I'm interested in what it would be like to be you."

"Acting is not about being someone different. It's finding the similarity in what is apparently different, then finding myself in there."

"An actor must interpret life, and in order to do so must be willing to accept all the experiences life has to offer. In fact, he must seek out more of life than life puts at his feet."

"To me, acting is the most logical way for people's neuroses to manifest themselves, in this great need we all have to express ourselves."

"Being an actor is the loneliest thing in the world. You are all alone with your concentration and imagination, and that's all you have. Being a good actor isn't easy. Being a man is even harder. I want to be both before I'm done."

"You must never treat your audience as customers. Treat 'em like partners."

"The term 'serious actor' is kind of an oxymoron, isn't it? Like 'Republican party' or 'airplane food.' If you catch me saying 'I am a serious actor,' I beg you to slap me."

"I've often been accused by critics of being myself onscreen. But being oneself is more difficult than you'd suppose."

"I don't want people to know what I'm actually like. It's not good for an actor."

"One of the nice things about acting is it allows you to live other people's lives without having to pay the price. I've never been one of those actors who has touted myself as a fascinating human being. I had to decide early on whether I was to be an actor or a personality."

"Acting is the perfect idiot's profession. It is the most minor of gifts and not a very high-class way to earn a living. After all, Shirley Temple could do it at the age of four."

"If you really want to be an actor who can satisfy himself and his audience, you need to be vulnerable."

"Never confuse the size of your paycheck with the size of your talent."

"Acting is a masochistic form of exhibitionism. It is not quite the occupation of an adult."

"Acting is all about honesty. If you can fake that, you've got it made."

"Never get caught acting."

"Never relax. If you relax, the audience relaxes."

"Acting to me is just being a man. Being human, and not forcing it."

"Acting is happy agony, because an actor is totally vulnerable. His total personality is exposed to critical judgment -- his intellect, his bearing, his diction, his whole appearance. In short, his ego."

"Without wonder and insight, acting is just a business. With it, it becomes creation. Acting should be bigger than life. Scripts should be bigger than life. It should all be bigger than life.”

"Never confuse the audience with the critics."

"Being an actor means being an instrument for someone else. And I want to give myself away completely."

“If there is a streak of ham anywhere in an actor, Shakespeare will bring it out.”

"For every successful actor or actress, there are countless numbers who don't make it. The name of the game is rejection. You go to an audition and you're told you're too tall or you're too Irish or your nose is not quite right. You're rejected for your education, you're rejected for this or that, and it's really tough. So I offer my performances as prayers for someone I've worked with or someone who has died. Their image comes into my head as I walk to the stage or in front of a camera, and I offer that performance up for that person."

"Fresh from a costume fitting, I had been posing in front of the mirror assuming what I thought was a strong position - arms folded in front, butch-looking ... you know - when I met with the woman in charge of the Holloway police station. She gave me the most invaluable advice: never let them see you cry, and never cross your arms. When I asked why, she said, 'Crossing your arms is a defensive action, therefore it is weak.'”

“A lot of acting is paying attention.”

"You have to think and not just speak. The lines come off the thoughts."

"Honesty isn't enough for me. That becomes very boring. If you can convince people what you're doing is real and it's also bigger than life - that's exciting."

"Never take top billing. You'll last longer that way."

“A real actor has to have an awful lot of imagination.”

"Acting is not a competition to me. In fact, one of the first things I learned about acting was that the only person you compete against is yourself."

"I give myself to my parts as a lover. It's the only way."

"As an actor, you're trying to portray the human condition."

"My acting career has boiled down to five stages: 'Who is Jack Elam?,' 'Get me Jack Elam,' 'I want a Jack Elam type,' 'I want a younger Jack Elam,' and 'Who is Jack Elam?'"

“Acting is half shame, half glory: shame at exhibiting yourself, glory when you can forget yourself.”

"Acting is not about dressing up. Acting is about stripping bare. The whole essence of learning lines is to forget them so you can make them sound like you thought of them that instant. Acting also provides the fulfillment of never being fulfilled: you're never as good as you'd like to be, so there is always something to hope for."

"Forget about the motivation. Just say the lines and try not to trip over the furniture."

"In acting, and in life, you must never look as if you are lost. Always look as if you know exactly where you are going, and if you don't know where you are going, head straight for the bar."

"An actor's job is not to feel things, but to make the audience feel things."

"Acting with your clothes on is giving a performance. Acting with your clothes off is making a documentary."

“In acting, you’re not just escaping your mind; to completely embody a character, you have to go to a soul level. The ability to spend some time in that space is incredibly freeing. You are constantly searching, changing things. It’s a sort of playground, and it should be playful and fun even if it’s a dark character, because you can get outside of yourself. Which doesn’t happen often. Most people are like, ‘You’re not yourself!’ It’s usually a negative comment. But in this case, you don’t want to be yourself—not being yourself is a compliment. When you’re acting and you’re really immersed in it, you don’t even know what happened in the last two minutes. When you’re so connected to something that you’re taken completely out of your world, out of your body, time is condensed and almost disappears. That’s when you really allow and invite another part of yourself to come in.”

"Insecurity, commonly regarded as a weakness in normal people, is the basic tool of the actor's trade."

"Actors today have three options: movies for fame, television for money, and theater for love."

"Acting is merely the art of keeping a large group of people from coughing."

"Acting is a matter of giving away secrets."

"Creative people are very insecure people because they don't know whether people like them or are in awe of them. That insecurity always comes out. It makes them a better actor, I feel."

"Talent is an amalgam of high sensitivity; easy vulnerability; high sensory equipment (seeing, hearing, touching, smelling, and tasting intensely); a vivid imagination, as well as a grip on reality; and the desire to communicate one's own experience and sensations, to make one's self heard and seen."