Jeff Goldblum Quotes

I wanted to be an actor. That was my real goal. But I wasn't any good at it, so I wrote my own material and acted through that. That's my idea of fun. I get to be all these things in the songs.

While I find my job as an actor challenging, I also think that there's fun in that challenge.

Sometimes you think about the job that we, as actors, do. I take it very seriously, and I care very much about it, but I'm paid to make believe. When you're a kid, you go to your friend's house, and it's, 'Let's pretend we're both cowboys!' Without belittling it, that's basically what I do - I tell stories.

It's very difficult to play opposite nothing. I did it for, like, six years - I ran from an invisible smoke monster for most of my twenties.

What I enjoy most is that every day I get to play a new character.

I like acting; I like being lost in the creative process.

I still really love acting. I find it really challenging. And I really love film; it's a lot of fun.

Acting is still, of course, what I love to do most. The beauty of it is that by changing characters, it never gets boring.

I mean, it's fine when you're a kid and someone runs into the playground and goes, 'I've got this great game of pretend,' and you play... As an actor, getting to play, getting to use your imagination and be childish - it is weird but it's wonderful.

You just suddenly think that there's something quite childish about acting. Basically, it's pretending, isn't it? It's good fun and I enjoy it, but it's a funny way of making a living, particularly when you make a very good wage, as I've been fortunate enough to do.

I like acting better than anything else, but, you know, directing's good.

I always had a dramatic flair. I'd like to dress up like a cowboy, play make-believe. But I didn't realize acting was something I had to do until I got to college.

I act, produce, and direct. They are three different jobs all within the same realm of creativity. I enjoy all of them equally, but ultimately, I'm an actor.

Acting is the most difficult job in the world.

We are not brain surgeons. We are not curing cancer. We are not finding the next cure for Alzheimer's. We are simply and merely entertainment. We take on and wear the masks of characters. That's what we're paid to do.

Acting is my first love and I want to stick to it. But I would be happy to offer my inputs to a script, if asked.

I want to delve into the world of performing.

One of my favourite games as a child was to dress up and improvise. Acting seemed obvious.

Acting is illusion, as much illusion as magic is - and not so much a matter of being real.

My mom (Kate McCauley) is an actress, so I guess she's the one that taught me it was a possibility. For as long as I can remember, I've always played make-believe ... It's something that I've always done, that I've always been comfortable doing.

In voicing so much is left to your imagination to create the world around you like that. It's really the essence of what's so fun for, I think, many people when they first start to want to be an actor, is that they realise they enjoy making up a world around them to exist in, a whole situation and a whole way of being. And even more so than theatre, animation requires that because there's just nothing to go on. It's in your head and your heart or it's not there at all.

Just by the nature of what we do it kind of gets you out of the regularities of life. Playing pretend for a living is a good way to have a release and playing make believe is a good way of getting away from it and doing things like this. So I think work gets me away from life.

I don't really enjoy working in TV, to be completely honest, even though it's incredibly lucrative, I'm just terrified of not being satiated in a myriad of different ways. It's amazing that I get to create every day, as an actor, or a director, or a writer, and I get to do it in a variety of different genres and worlds and characterizations. I think that's the great privilege of what we do, we get to make believe. I get to go to so many different places, try on different occupations, take on different points of view. That's what's always been sort of alluring.

I will say they were horrified when I wanted to be an actor. It wasn't a showbiz-y family, and my parents are real introverts who don't go to a lot of Hollywood parties and are most comfortable in their pajamas in our sweet little home. Part of the reason I wanted to be an actor and not just a writer is because I felt much more extroverted than that - I love to be around people, and feed off people's energy, and collaborations. If I hadn't had their example, I wouldn't have been so serious, but I also wouldn't have wanted so much to find another creative outlet.

Most actors are very deeply passionate about their line of work. I suppose there are probably people who sell insurance policies that are passionate about it, but I'm thinking the ratio is a little higher for actors. But, I may be wrong.