Literature is an easier way to study acting, because then you can take any kind of spin.
If I'm serious, yes, I'd like to have done what Shakespeare did... to act and write. You learn so much from acting. One of our great writers, Alan Bennett, does both supremely well. When I write a story, I tend to speak it aloud as I'm writing it.
I was in college, and I studied everything, but was really not good at anything until I found philosophy, and, then, political science. I thought, 'Wow, this is something I really enjoy.' I kind of got into that whole world of law and political science. I was really into it and enjoying it, and then I took an acting elective, and that was it.
You spend enough time on set as an actor and it's great when a director was at some point an actor or understands acting. They're able to finesse performances out of you that a lot directors can't get.
I guess my first big break was getting the hit show 'Cavemen' on ABC. People made fun of it, but it was a huge opportunity for me and moved me out to L.A., where I learned a ton about acting and how much I didn't want to be in makeup for four hours a day.
Acting is like a high wire act. Your margin for error is very slim.
When I'm acting in a film that I'm not producing, I stay to myself.
My whole thing is I want to have a backup plan because maybe I won't get another acting job after 'Fame', maybe I'll want to give up on acting in five years or whatever and I want to have something else that I enjoy just as much as I enjoy acting.
I wish they taught green screen acting classes.
President Obama and a small team of senior national security officials were in the unusual position of acting as al-Awlaki's jury, judges, and de facto executioners.
Other acting opportunities had come along, but nothing that was tantalizing enough to me to step away from what I found most interesting.
It's the weirdest thing. When you go into acting, you expect to be a huge star and to be recognized... It did happen, but not in the way you expect it to... In L.A., I'm just another character actor.
If it's well written and well directed and you've got good actors to work with, acting is easy. But making sure all the ducks are in a row is the hard part. It's very rare.
Acting attracts shy people and show-offs.
I hope to continue building my acting career and work more on projects that fulfill my artistic thirst.
Acting is a matter of giving away secrets.
Will Smith is one of my favorite actors, and he's also a triple threat. He successfully crossed over from music into acting. Also, I liked 'I Am Legend' because it was so unexpected. The movie wasn't what I thought it'd turn out to be.
You gotta understand, there weren't a whole lot of roles for Hispanics in the Eighties, so comedy was really the way I could really feed myself and eventually feed my family. I was an actor who learned to be a comic, and it's cool to come back and get back into acting - move forward in the direction I started out to do in the beginning.
It was only when I realized how actors have the power to move people that I decided to pursue acting as a career.
I remember the mid-'50s well. It was when my life changed, and I left acting to become one of the first female television news reporters in the U.K.
I would be an actress for the rest of my life just because it's really relaxing. Writing is hard work, and stand-up is so stressful before you get on stage, but acting is a complete ensemble experience.
I was doing specialisation in advertising. I had no interest in acting. One of my friends, who was doing specialisation in films, made a short film casting me. Luckily, I got a break, and my acting career took off.
There's sketch, improv, writing, acting, music, and badminton. Those are the seven forms of comedy.
Sitting at the table during Color Purple and looking up and suddenly realizing I was acting in front of Steven Spielberg, was pretty cool. It was pretty good.
An acting assistant stage manager in a theater in Canterbury, a rep theater. A small wage but just enough to get by on, and I made props and I walked on, and I changed scenery, and I realized that I just loved it.
I want to keep on progressing. I definitely think acting is a long process to be one of the greats like Morgan Freeman or Jack Nicholson.
Film acting is really the trick of doing moments. You rarely do a take that lasts more than 20 seconds. You really earn your spurs acting onstage. I needed to do that for myself. I would hate to say at the end of everything that I never did a stage play.
I was changing a light bulb over Groucho Marx's bed, so I took my shoes off, got on his bed and changed the bulb. When I got off the bed he said: 'That's the best acting you've ever done.'
I think that Mos Def is the best actor, but when you talk about rappers in films, I don't really think the quality of the acting is most important because most rappers are put in movies because of the personality and people want to see that.
I really love to act; I love everything about it. I've never had this addiction to being known. I mean, sure, if you go into acting, there's part of you that is saying, 'I want attention' but I was brought up to work to deserve attention, and it is the work, not the trappings that are important.
I started acting in junior high. I was in 'Guys and Dolls.' I was Stanley Kowalski. In my head, before coming to Hollywood, I thought, 'I can play anything.'
I feel I'm two people: I have my interest in acting and I have a lot of other political interests I'd like to pursue.
I have the luxury of being a little boy... To me, the most important thing in life is to be a human being. Second is acting.
For 50 years, acting was the reason I got up in the morning.
We don't have sources who are dissidents on other sources. Should they come forward, that would be a tricky situation for us. But we're presumably acting in such a way that people feel morally compelled to continue our mission, not to screw it up.
We are rapidly approaching a world where everybody and everything will be connected and where all that connectivity will be bound together, acting with intelligence in a way that simplifies and improves people's lives.
