I love acting, but I am a mom, and the roles just weren't coming because of a mixture of things: because I'm not ambitious, and because I'm older, and I had a baby. I really felt like I had said a graceful and completely happy goodbye to acting in a significant way. And I had sort of made my peace with that.
When I started acting, I hoped I could make some kind of positive contribution to this world. When I get a letter from some kid in Nebraska saying that, prior to Han, nobody wanted to be his friend because Asians weren't cool if they weren't into martial arts - Now he's accepted and recognized as a human being. That's pretty awesome, right?
I'd been very certain about not wanting to do the acting thing because of my father. I thought I'd always have the father-son thing of 'He got you the part.'
Reacting is so important to the craft of acting.
I went into acting because I'm easily bored. Acting seemed to give vent to a lot of different feelings.
Actors should be better poker players. But I think there's actual skill and crazy guts that you need to play poker - this ability to put all this money on the line inside of that game of cards. There's this whole different set of skills that doesn't apply to acting whatsoever.
I think I've always wanted to direct, but I didn't go to film school. I was lucky enough to work in movies, and I think those became my film school in terms of acting and watching directors work and also writing and co-writing and producing.
I thought acting was just going on and remembering all of one's lines.
I was a very undisciplined person but acting was something that actually motivated me to get up in the morning. I hadn't experienced that before, but it was something that really excited me. I think I could be quite self-conscious and it gave me a release.
I do love acting. But to work as a photojournalist would have been extraordinary.
A lot of actors think they can't be happy without the acting... But I think I couldn't be happy with it anymore.
I just stick to my job, which is acting. Things like posters, publicity material, and promotions are entirely the film-maker's prerogative. I don't get into all of that.
From a young age, I had done a lot of theater and musical theater. I wasn't really sure what I wanted to do with my life, but every time I was away from acting, I just felt very incomplete and a little stir crazy.
I've always loved acting, and I do respect the craft.
The danger chiefly lies in acting well; no crime's so great as daring to excel.
Whether it's repro rights, violence against women, or just plain old vanilla sexism, most issues affecting women have one thing in common - they exist to keep women 'in their place.' To make sure that we're acting 'appropriately,' whatever that means.
When I started doing advertisements, I really enjoyed the whole process of shooting, and I realised that I could do the little bit of acting required quite easily. My directors also told me that I have a flair for acting and that I should polish it and try for films. Then I thought I probably had it in me - why not give it a shot?
I remember going to acting class, so certain that no one's ever going to know my name.
After having a career in Spain for eight years, I went back to being anonymous again, having to prove myself to the industry and myself, to prove I was capable of acting in a different language. It was a good challenge, and I can't complain.
I want to go to college, and I want to keep acting and singing.
To be at acting school, it was kind of the first time you felt the freedom to be as much of yourself as you wanted. People weren't going to judge you.
I'm a really uncomfortable person, so the whole Hollywood lifestyle - attention on me, the cameras, people telling me how to live my life, talking about me in a public way - none of that is appealing to me. Acting is amazing. But everything that comes with it is such a turnoff.
I use every single thing that Alfred Hitchcock taught me in my acting career... I am very grateful for the education he gave me in making motion pictures.
I talk about race a lot. It's been my work ever since I came out of acting school. But it's true that in a way talking about race is a taboo. Because so many of our debates about race have to do not with race but with what we are willing to see, what we will not see and what we don't want to see.
When you're acting, you're escaping and hiding behind something. It's cliched to say, but there's a safety there.
Acting is emotionally draining, so I make it a point to not do anything when I am home.
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.
As a person I'm perfectly vain, I'm just vainer as an actor about my ability. My acting vanity trumps my human vanity.
Acting is an art form and you want to take roles that are challenged and it's more of a challenge I think to play dark characters. Not that I want to always play those, but it is a challenge and challenges are rewarding and fun.
I drifted into acting. My grandfather had a house in Buffalo in which there was a stage, and his friends met every two weeks or so to put on plays. So it was natural for me to put on plays, too, when I went to boarding school. I put on everything in the drama - I was indiscriminate. I put on Yeats and Shaw and Lady Gregory.
Acting is just playing the violin in an orchestra. Directing is being the conductor.
It's different being a director. I suppose, especially if it's a story you've written and you feel compelled to tell, in some ways it's a lot easier than acting because you're orchestrating the piece. As an actor, sometimes you're trying to second-guess what people want.
Sean Penn has announced his retirement from acting about 72 times.
When you start acting as a child, you grow up ahead of your movies.
I was a terrific liar as a child, and I believe my lies. So it's a natural step into acting.
I remember once when I told Lindsay Anderson at a party that acting was just a sophisticated way of playing cowboys and Indians he almost had a fit.
