Actor Quotes

I knew exactly when the fever had struck. I had been reading Hamlet in an English class at school. Everyone else stumbled, puzzling over the strange words. Then it had been my turn, and the language had suddenly woken in me, so that my heart and lungs and tongue and throat were on fire. Later, I understood that this was why people spoke of Shakespeare as a god. At the time, I felt like weeping. Somebody had released me from dumbness, from utter isolation. I knew that I could live inside these words, that they would give me a a shape, a shell. I had no idea, then, that I would never play Hamlet…. I’m an actor, and in a good year I earn eleven thousand pounds for dressing up as a carrot.

Take the clapper and become the alarm that the world so desperately needs.

Plants are more courageous than almost all human beings: an orange tree would rather die than produce lemons, whereas instead of dying the average person would rather be someone they are not.

The simple act of caring is heroic.

His intuition was luminous from the instant you met him. So was his intelligence. A lot of actors act intelligent, but Philip was the real thing: a shining, artistic polymath with an intelligence that came at you like a pair of headlights and enveloped you from the moment he grabbed your hand, put a huge arm round your neck and shoved a cheek against yours; or if the mood took him, hugged you to him like a big, pudgy schoolboy, then stood and beamed at you while he took stock of the effect. (About Philip Seymour Hoffman)

A movie is not a movie, it is a potential nuclear furnace of inspiration, courage and conscience.

Make films that purify the soul with the flow of rational, vigorous and compassionate thinking.

You as a soul you are alive, you as an actor - dead, as a character - dead... That's life, like it or not, it's not my problem!

Sometimes being an actor is like being some kind of detective where you're on the search for a secret that will unlock the character.

Healthy entertainment does not evoke raw emotions in the mind of a viewer only to make them wreak havoc, rather it guides those emotions in a healthy direction.

Every villian is a hero in his own mind.

The ability to be emotive comes from within...it's innate".

Everythings a choice. Nobody's born good. Nobody's born evil. It's always a choice.

Some days it is a heroic act just to refuse the paralysis of fear and straighten up and step into another day.

Only the gentle are ever really strong.

Use filmmaking to eliminate racism – use to it terminate misogyny – use it to destroy homophobia and all other primitiveness.

I always am in a role, lovely – for you, for them – even for myself. Yeah... Even when I’m alone, I am still in a role – and I myself am the most exacting audience I have ever had.