Quotes About Acting And Life

“Strange that men, from age to age, should consent to hold their lives at the breath of another, merely that each in his turn may have a power of acting the tyrant according to the law! Oh, God! give me poverty! Shower upon me all the imaginary hardships of human life! I will receive them with all thankfulness. Turn me a prey to the wild beasts of the desert, so I be never again the victim of man, dressed in the gore-dripping robes of authority! Suffer me at least to call life, the pursuits of life, my own! Let me hold it at the mercy of the elements, of the hunger of the beasts, or the revenge of barbarians, but not of the cold-blooded prudence of monopolists and kings!”

— William Godwin

“Every time the phone rang, my heart jumped. Was it Alexander? And when it wasn't him my heart would break into a million pieces. It had been two longs days since I had seen my Gothic mate. I was so preoccupied with Alexander, dreaming of the next time we'd be together, nothing else mattered. I didn't wash the spot where his tender love lips had pressed against my flesh. I was acting like I was straight out of a Gidget movie! What had happened to me? I was losing my edge! For the first time in my life I was really afraid. Afraid of never seeing him again and afraid of being rejected.”

— Ellen Schreiber

“There are moments in the life of old liars who have been play-acting all their lives when they are so carried away by the part they're playing that they actually do weep and tremble with excitement, in spite of the fact that at that very moment (or second later) they could have whispered to themselves: 'you're lying, you shameless old fool! Now, too, you're just acting a part in spite of all your "sacred" wrath and "sacred" moment of your wrath.' Dmitry frowned threateningly and looked at his father with indescribable contempt.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

“Here I am baking cookies and looking all over the house for you," she turned her attention to Gabe and uncovered his eyes, "hoping to bring my man something to munch on, and instead I walk in on your crazy monkey sex! Thanks you two, now I'm officially scarred for life." She swatted the air in front of her, as if she could shoo away the images, and darted over the broken dishes and cookies, up the staircase, with a flustered string of expletives.
Gabe watched her ascend the stairway and let out another amused cackle. "Oh don't mind her. She's acting like she just witnessed her parents in the act." Bending down, he snatched a cookie and gave us a thumbs-up. "You look hot, kids. Carry on.”

— Rachael Wade

“So if I get pegged as a bikini girl, that's fine, and that can still translate into acting or other areas. But, no, I don't wanna be doing bikini shoots my whole life.”

— Kate Upton

“In acting, you draw so much on your private life.”

— Emmanuelle Riva

“When I was little, I was a voracious reader, and that really led me to acting as well. I loved being transported into someone else's life, and that's what reading provided me. I also really love to entertain people.”

— Autumn Reeser

“I went to NYU Tisch for undergrad, and it was amazing. My life then was extremely experimental with acting. I did crazy theater where we would be rolling around on the floor. I would be playing grandmothers, and clowns, and all this crazy stuff. Then I would be doing Shakespeare eight hours a day.”

— Katie Lowes

“The acting served as an outlet for my emotions for some time because I was doing it under the guise of someone else. And that can only be therapeutic up to a point until you truly deal with it and can express it to someone directly. Acting was a helpful outlet for me as a child. In some ways, I can say it saved my life.”

— Lindsay Wagner

“Enthusiasm needs to be effective enthusiasm. We must distinguish between the contribution and enthusiasm of the cheerleader and the enthusiasm of the player. While cheerleaders serve an important purpose, the real contest involves players on the field or on the court of life. We must not go through life acting only as enthusiastic cheerleaders available for hire; we must be anxiously and personally engaged.”

— Neal A. Maxwell

“I don't believe in acting. I think that people in life act, but when you are on the stage or, in my case, also on screen, you have to be true.”

— Luise Rainer

“When people in Vancouver do recognize me, they hide it. I went to a store near my home and I know they're 'Battlestar' fans - they have pictures on the wall! - and I know they know me, but everyone was so smooth and pretended I wasn't there. Most people don't realize how good they are at acting in everyday life.”

— Grace Park

“I'm 23, so I'm not done with my life. But acting, definitely, out of what I've done so far, makes me feel the most alive and is very invigorating and thrilling. So I figured I might as well try it for a while.”

— Grace Gummer

“I'm not interested in becoming a bigger star, I'm not interested in being the wealthiest guy in the world. I'm doing fine, I love acting, and I want to do it for the rest of my life.”

— Seth Green

“I can do everything with ease on the stage, whereas in real life I feel too big and clumsy. So I didn't choose acting. It chose me.”

— Ingrid Bergman

“Even when I get to the point where I am acting and performing, where I want to be with my career, I'm never going to think of anyone as lower than me. Everyone's the celebrity of their own life, you know?”

— Ireland Baldwin

“I'm not looking to be a trophy. When not acting, I spend my time studying metaphysics and quantum mechanics to keep my life as grounded as I can.”

— Tanit Phoenix

“I'd had an early stint in acting school, and there was something satisfying about becoming a character, about being inside another mind that you had to create out of yourself. As I moved toward a life in writing, I found many of the things I'd learned in acting school still applied.”

— Michael Redhill

“I worked in theater my whole life. My mom was a drama teacher at my middle school. In high school, I was Drama Club President every year, and then I auditioned for conservatory acting programs.”

— Jenn Proske

“My parents are a big help, and they're always making sure I have a normal life and my life isn't all just about acting and stuff.”

— Cayden Boyd

“Since I was very young, probably two or three, I had really good memorization skills. I would memorize stuff from TV and perform it for my family. I was the little performer for most of my early life. So eventually, my mom caught onto that and thought I might want to get into acting.”

— Nathan Kress

“After 'The Real Thing,' I thought about giving up acting because it's difficult to have a rich life outside your work when you're an actress, a private life that can survive being picked up and put down. That's what I thought, anyway.”

— Jennifer Ehle

“Acting is a bit of a substitute for life.”

— Nick Nolte

“In day-to-day life, our brain sends lots of signals. In acting, there are no signals. You have to believe in what you are trying to portray.”

— Anupam Kher

“She is very lovely, and if she knows as little about life as she does about acting, she will be a delightful experience.”

— Oscar Wilde

“Seriously I suspected I was a good actor, though I didn't know it during 'Monsoon Wedding.' Now I realize the more I learn, the less I know about acting ... and life.”

— Randeep Hooda

“When you do a lot of acting your entire life, you see the entire set from one point of view. To have a chance to step back and pull it all together is really exciting. You want to do it all; you want to have a hand in everything.”

— Danica McKellar

“I was into acting as a kid. There was a time when I was 18 that I played the boy in a production of 'Equus' in Oregon, and I thought that was going to be my life.”

— Matisyahu

“Throughout my life I have taken detours in acting and writing, but art remains my abiding passion.”

— Gloria Vanderbilt

“One of the reasons I got into acting to begin with is that I was trying to figure out how life worked. It was interesting to me to try and follow how other people, real or imaginary, would deal with problems, because I was trying to deal with my own problems.”

— Michael Shannon

“Lisa was thinking, as she climbed the apparently unending staircase, the she had taken pretty long odds. She had not hesitated to buck the Tiger, Life. Simon Iff had warned her that she was acting on impulse. But
on the top of that
he had merely urged her to be true to it. She swore once more that she would stick to her guns. The black mood fell from her. She turned and looked upon the sea, now far below. The sun, a hollow orb of molten glory, hung quivering in the mist of the Mediterranean; and Lisa entered for a moment into a perfect peace of spirit. She became once with Nature, instead of a being eternally at war with it.”

— Aleister Crowley

“I used to be much heavier when I first started out acting and did a lot of crash dieting and a lot of crash exercise - a ton for a month before you burned out. Then I made a decision in my twenties to only do things that I can do for life, so everything's kind of in moderation for me.”

— Rhea Seehorn

“There can be no creative morality unless man has the possibility of freedom. This is where the moralists make their mistake. If they want man to change his way of life, they must assume that he is free, for if he is not, all the raging and protesting in the world will make no difference. On the other hand, a man who is acting from the fear of a moralist's threats or from the lure of his promises is not making a free act! If man is not free, threats and promises may modify his conduct, but they will not change it in any essential respect. If he is free, threats and promises will not make him use his freedom.”

— Alan W. Watts

“That's what acting is all about - it's all about bringing truth from your own life, and putting it into your characters. If you have the advantage of using your own life in your work, that's always the way to go.”

— Michael Eklund

“It's been such a struggle to learn all that I have; I wouldn't want to give any of that knowledge up. That's why I've always loved acting; as a kid, I didn't necessarily like my real life, so I could escape into these other characters and experience a life completely different from my own.”

— Drew Barrymore

“You're responsible for yourself as an actress, you know that your personal growth goes through that alchemy, and you give as much importance to your life as you do to your acting.”

— Jeanne Moreau

“In fact you can begin to discover and investigate whether you are an actor or not, whether you're in my view, qualified for a life in this profession or in this endeavor by checking yourself out and acting every day, getting plays and scripts and getting together with people and divvying up the parts and acting in one way or another, or writing things.”

— Jeff Goldblum