Professional Acting Quotes

The words of his various writing instructors and professional mentors over the years came back to him at times like these, and he found a new understanding in their advice: Writing is rewriting. The rough draft is just that. You can't polish what you haven't written.

Things that made for a normal life - like a daily routine that followed the sun - took a back seat to times like these, and he exulted in that change because it served as proof that his writing was indeed the most important thing in his life. It wasn't a conscious choice on his part, like deciding to repaint the bathroom or go buy the groceries, but an overarching reallocation of his existence that was as undeniable as breathing. Day turned into night, breakfast turned into dinner, and the laptop or the writing tablet beckoned even when he was asleep.

He would often awake with a new idea - as if he'd merely been on a break and not unconscious - and he would see the empty seat before the desk not as his station in some pointless assembly line, but as the pilot's seat in a ship that could go anywhere. ~ Vincent H. O'Neil

The first time I was nominated for an award for professional acting, I was in my mid-twenties. I was married and the mother of my first two daughters. I had been working for near to 15 years. ~ Tyne Daly

I do not regret one professional enemy I have made. Any actor who doesn't dare to make an enemy should get out of the business. ~ Bette Davis

Somehow the disorder hooks into all kinds of fears and insecurities in many clinicians. The flamboyance of the multiple, her intelligence and ability to conceptualize the disorder, coupled with suicidal impulses of various orders of seriousness, all seem to mask for many therapists the underlying pain, dependency, and need that are very much part of the process. In many ways, a professional dealing with a multiple in crisis is in the same position as a parent dealing with a two-year-old or with an adolescent's acting-out behavior. (236) ~ Lynn I. Wilson

I started playing violin when I was six, so I thought I could be a professional. It wasn't until I was 15 when I got into acting classes and realized this was what I wanted to do. ~ Torrey DeVitto

Judi Dench is incredible. She takes acting to another level. She is a thorough professional. She is always smiling and cheerful. She painstakingly rehearses with co-stars and allows you to be natural. ~ Tena Desae

The Chosen Butts became an instant club of sorts. We tried our best to be professional and not act overly excited, but it was clear we were bonded because of our excellent butts I mean acting ability. ~ Lauren Graham

In all American professional sports you start on a certain level and you have to work your way up through a farm system. It's really the same in acting. ~ Bruce Dern

Because acting was my only professional outlet, I put a ton of pressure on the roles that I did. I overstepped my bounds, I tried to control things that were out of my purview as an actor and in some cases even tried to direct my scenes because I felt I knew how they should run rather than trust the director. ~ James Franco

I've been acting since I was six. I actually played a boy when I was six in 'Tommy.' I played Tommy and they put a wig on me. They put up my hair and put this little boy wig on me and that was my first acting experience. Then I did some other professional theater. I did Shakespeare when I was older. ~ Jojo

I could describe my career in two words: who knew. I was on the path to becoming a professional baseball player, but I got injured in college. When I decided to move out to L.A. to try acting, nobody was betting on me, not even my family. But it's always been that way for me; nothing has come easy. ~ Shemar Moore

Acting like an adult and being professional on set and getting my work done has just been a lifestyle for me. It's not something I have to try hard to do, necessarily. ~ Colin Ford

I did community theater and kids programs at professional theaters and plays at school and voice lessons for seven years. I stopped because it was so time-consuming. But then I realized that I had access to this world where I could go on auditions. And there wasn't too much of an identity crisis when I started acting professionally because I had been acting longer than I had been writing. It didn't feel new. ~ Tavi Gevinson

Well, I've been a professional racer for nine years. And if I could get it to pay me as much as acting, I'd give up all the rest in a second. Working in television, however, has made me accustomed to a certain lifestyle that I'd like to maintain. ~ Jason Priestley

Environment protection weighs the same in my life as my professional acting career. ~ Li Bingbing

I think when you're working with a character that another writer is acting as - for lack of a better word - custodian of, your obligation as a professional is to not do anything that violates that 'primary' take. ~ Greg Rucka

At the Neighborhood Playhouse School of Theatre, Sanford Meisner said, 'When you go into the professional world, at a stock theatre somewhere, backstage, you will meet an older actor, someone who has been around awhile. He will tell you tales and anecdotes, about life in the theatre. He will speak to you about your performance and the performances of others, and he will generalize to you, based on his experience and his intuitions, about the laws of the stage. Ignore this man!' ~ David Mamet

Believe it or not, I kind of went into professional wrestling so I could get an avenue into acting. ~ Kurt Angle

Acting is the most insecure of all the trades, the most risky. In their professional lifetime most actors rehearse longer than they play, spend more time traipsing from office to office in search of jobs than they rehearse and play combined. ~ Tallulah Bankhead

I got back to the vehicles and spotted Ashley Voss right away. She was standing there waiting with her rucksack, ready to go. I walked up to her, smiled, and said, "Hey, what's up? I'm Noah."
"Hi. I'm Ashley," she said without much emotion.
"Cool. Are you excited to come to our area?" I flashed her a grin.
After a brief pause she said, "Yeah, the medics can use a female."
She was acting like a professional and I was acting more like someone standing at a bar trying to buy her a drink. As if that couldn't be more awkward, right at that moment my radio squawked loudly, "Hey, can somebody get me that female medic's roster number? I need it before we head out." It was Jerry, ruining my game.
I leaned over and hit the button and said a little too proudly, "I've got the female medic with me now. I will get that for you."
And before I could ask her what it was, Jerry came back over the radio, "Galloway. You're with the female. Why am I not surprised?" Ashley gave me her roster number, and I sent it back to Jerry.
I turned to Ashley and said, "I'm not a player, just wanted to know more about you."
She didn't look that convinced. We got in the trucks and drove back. At the potato plant all the guys started sniffing this girl out like a bunch of hound dogs. One of the guys ran and grabbed her rucksack for her and carried it into the medic station, like he was a bellhop. ~ Noah Galloway

Seen from the point of view of the composer, the most nonsensical practice is that of casting people in musicals who are unable to sing. No one would cast a dancing part with someone who cannot dance sufficiently to come up to professional standards. The same is true of acting. But when it comes to singing, more often than not it is amateur night ... Either musicals should be written for specified performers in the first place, or they should be cast with people who are adequate to its dancing, acting and singing demands. ~ Ernest Gold

Even you, the professional helper, often mistaken for the enlightened Guru or Staretz, can become lost in your thoughts that you must be competent without fault. You may become enthralled with your identity as a professional, even the pressures of the culture of mastery that expects you to heal your clients without fail. Never mind all of the variables over which you have no control, it is up to you, according to the canons of mastery, to control the health and well-being of those for whom you provide professional care. This potentiates a furthering alienation between you and your clients. You are at risk to become, if you have not already, the one who does to your clients; to be the one the active subject acting upon the passive and receptive objects, your clients; to be the one in possession of special knowledge, technique and mastery. All of this conspires to coax or coerce you into treating your client as reduced, a mere case. Unawareness to these influences gives you little chance to consider their influence on your practice in the clinical setting, much less give attentive efforts to resist or change them. ~ Scott E. Spradlin

In professional wrestling, I think that they want you to be bigger than life. It's almost like an over-acting type thing - whereas on the big screen, you're 35 feet and they've got a close-up of you to put it on the screen in the movie house. At 35 feet, it's more subtlety than the overboard drama that we do in pro wrestling. ~ Kevin Nash

I started theater when I was three, and I started doing professional acting when I was nine. ~ Liana Liberato

Fashion is really interesting to me, but I'm not a professional model, so I'm focusing my career on acting. ~ Rinko Kikuchi

It's fine to seek professional help, but I urge everyone - no matter how big their portfolio - to truly understand every suggestion they're given before acting. ~ Suze Orman

I carried on acting during school holidays and was all set to go to drama school when I was offered my first professional job appearing in 'King David' with Richard Gere. ~ Gina Bellman

It wasn't until after I received my education that I seriously looked at sports entertainment as a way to make a career for myself. And they've got to take it in stride. It's very much like acting or playing professional sports: One percent of one percent of the people who try out for it can actually say they make their living off of doing it. ~ John Cena

I thought that choosing a non-professional was a condition for me, because it would allow Juliette to have a less-professional way of acting. It would challenge her performance as a professional actress. ~ Abbas Kiarostami

If I weren't acting, I think I'd want to be a professional hockey player. ~ Sterling Beaumon

I've only half-admitted I'm a professional. I know I am, I've paid my dues, but one of the things I could do better when I'm acting is to really be rigorous and to think I know how to do it. To use my brain. ~ Emily Mortimer