Billy Bob Thornton Quotes

I wasn't working much. So I focused on studying, and I really learned what it means to be an actor. And here I was on Jonny Quest,working with all these great people from back in the golden age of Hollywood, who came up doing radio. These were journeymen, working actors. It made me proud, and gave me some insight into what acting was really about if you weren't a star.

I like to think of myself as an actress, I think of going through all of the films as my kind of film academy, the way that I've learnt.

I regret not having enough training, I trained for a year at The Royal Court, but I very quickly went off to do films and television.

My dad didn't often bring me to the set, being an actor himself, so my infancy as an actor was wracked with a lot of giggles and nervousness.

I never applied to any acting schools. I don't know if that's just bad reporting, or - sometimes I just make stuff up.

Marilyn always dreamt of being an actress. She didn't, by the way, dream of being just a star. She dreamt of being an actress. And she had always lived somehow with that dream. And that is why, despite the fact that she became one of the most unusual and outstanding stars of all time, she herself was never satisfied. When she came to New York, she began to perceive the possibilities of really accomplishing her dream, of being an actress.

I'm an actor - I want to be known for that.

I never not wanted to become an actress.

Acting is like sex: you either do it and don't talk about it, or you talk about it and don't do it. That's why I'm always suspicious of people who talk too much about either.

I've always had an itch for acting and a passion for acting, but never really got to dabble into it too much, and now I can say I'm officially an acrtress.

Almost everything I learned about being an actor came from those early years at the Actor's Studio.

I wanted to be an actor my whole young life. My dad was an actor, obviously - he won an Academy Award, but I had no idea what was involved. I had all the wrong ideas about acting.

I'm a professional at what I do. I'm an actor. I've been on enough movie sets to know the difference between a stage light and an apple box. I know the difference. Why? Because I've been around it long enough and I know.

I've always considered myself an actor, but I wasn't making a living as an actor.

I haven't done any training. I come from a family of actors, but I haven't done any training.

Learning the craft as an actor in Los Angeles is a very hard thing to do, in my opinion. We all come from a certain world and when you start learning the craft, you need material to read/study that you can relate to. We do not have too many Latino writers on the West Coast that I was able to relate to (or at least, I didn't know at the time). I came from the streets, so the most published authors had no relation to my world. As soon as I picked up Pinero & Guirgis, it was all over. It was my world, just in a different location. They cracked me open inside and out.

Acting is like an addiction - once you start, you can't stop.

Acting has always been my passion. It's always been my love, and I've always done it, since I was a kid.

I don't really think it matters if you go into stage or TV as long as you do a bit of character work, really.

Acting gets into your blood, after so many years, and I just always like revisiting it. It's fun to meet new people and watch them coming along, at different stages of their careers.

As an actor, it's always been good to be working at all.

It was kind of an amazing class. I went to the Strasberg Institute in New York for a little while after I got there, and I've never seen anybody who was in any of my classes there ever again. I mean, that's not to say they didn't become somebody. I'm not sure. I mean, Sam Jackson could've been in my class, for all I remember.

Everything about acting drives me and gives me the need to really try it. It's an evolution - doing the same thing for 12 years is kind of a chunk. Anyone would be up for a little bit of a change. It is so rewarding to do a movie, and so enjoyable. It's hard work, but really wonderful.

Being an actor opened doors for me to explore my emotions as different people and characters, and expand my own inner soul.

When I say that the acting is sort of like a normal acting experience, I'm just talking about the interacting in actual scenes, like doing dialogue.