Christian Bale Quotes

A lot of actors like to get themselves worked up, and I think from what I saw from Mr. Redford, he goes the other way. He relaxes into it.

I am not one of those actors who believes he has to live the part he is playing. I can turn it on and off.

I love acting and really taking on another person, another life.

Acting isn't that hard, really. I mean, I think that people make a big deal about it, but you just kind of try to say your lines naturally.

There's a lot of actors that I admire because they can just switch one second into the character. Then, they go back to jokes, and then they're doing something really dramatic. I can't do that. I have to really focus.

Claude Rains was what we call an actor's actor. He was very involved with himself and his performance.

As a young performer, I didn't know that you can have a great time playing someone in terrible crisis. The more you know it's not real, the deeper you can go into it. And the easier it is to let it go when it's done.

You have to do real acting, not just do a voice.

I think the more you do as an actor, the more facility you have to switch on and off.

When I'm acting, I'm two beings. There's the one monitoring the distance between myself and the camera, making sure I hit my marks, and there is the one driven by this inner fire, this delicious fear.

I think most actors are shy. I really do. The greatest actors can disappear. I had friends call me the Blend-In Man.

It's easier to see in someone else, another actor, how they kind of disappear and then this other persona appears. A great actor is a thing of mystery.

An actor is an actor is an actor. The less personality an actor has off stage the better. A blank canvas on which to draw the characters he plays.

I feel no terror when I'm acting. There's no tension. It's just a part.

I love actors; I love seeing great performances. I just love that, when I'm seeing a performance, that inside me, I just go, 'Oh my God, how are you doing that? Where is that coming from?' Where you see an actor do something, and I can't even locate it in my own body.

What is important is for me to do my best work on camera. The camera is inches away from you and sees every micromovement of every muscle of your eye. And if you're not relaxed, the camera sees it.

Good actors, actually, in real life, are shy and very quiet people a lot of the time.

There's posh character actors. For God's sake, Olivier was one of the greatest character actors in the world. Hamlet, Shylock, Othello - Othello! Whether you like it or not.

I really consider acting a high art.

The beauty of acting is you just get lost in it. You play the character, and you hope that it works.

When I see an emotion being enacted by a great actor, I always feel I can never do that.

If you wanted John Gielgud to cry, he could say, 'Which eye?'

I was blown away watching Michael Keaton act because he was such a maniacal, evil person on set. He takes on a totally different life, and it was so amazing to watch him work.

You know in acting you have those moments in a movie where a character yells or breaks down crying and you're like, wow, that's acting?

Actors are bloody marvelous at hiding.