Ian McShane Quotes

I like being able to marry the actor and the technician inside of me. It's really fulfilling. It exercises all of my creative muscles.

If you do a character that resonates enough, people are always going to see you as that character. It will just be up to me to make choices where I can flex other muscles.

There are things that I will always shoot, but now that the modeling and acting worlds are becoming very close, you can do a little bit of one and more of the other.

I think they can co-exist. You don't have to put one down for another. I've been bitten by the acting bug, and where it takes me, it won't take away from the music.

I never wanted to be a brand director. I didn't want that kind of stamp. I wanted to be more like Pacino or Dustin Hoffman or Meryl Streep or De Niro - you know, a chameleon as a storyteller - because I love all kinds of movies.

The hardest thing as somebody who does both is - and I'm very serious as an actor, and I consider myself very serious as a musician, engineer, music artist - is learning that it's OK to be versatile.

I don't really make a distinction because when I'm acting, I feel like an actor, and when I DJ, I feel like a DJ, and when I play the guitar, I feel like a guitar player. I don't know which I prefer. I think I just like to perform, in some way or another.

I've directed web series, music videos, film shorts, and theater. It's just a hat I put on.

I'm sometimes a cartoonist, and there's an audience for that, and I'm sometimes an illustrator, and there's an audience for that.

Being an actor, I feel I need to take up challenges and do different roles without thinking about whether the audience will accept me in those roles or not.

The only thing that drives me is those different sort of roles which allow me to experiment.

For me, theatre and cinema are both pillars of an actor's life; I'd feel very half-baked if I was only doing one and not the other.

I tried my hand in action films, and now I am back to love stories, as people like to see me as a lover boy! But as an actor, I want to try all genres.

For my web series 'Get Your Life,' I wrote that and produced it and starred in it so that I could have a body of work that represents my voice as a writer and as a performer.

I wanted to direct more than I wanted to act. And I found I couldn't do everything.

I always knew I wanted to be a performance artist.

I'm an actor. I can do whatever I want. As an actor, not everything has to be the most obvious choice. And sometimes, the best thing you can do is to defy expectations.

I'm always looking to play the part that people don't think of me in.

You can't reinvent yourself for every movie.

What's enjoyable for me, as an actor, is to do as many different things as possible.

It's always better just to do work that you're really proud of and work that you enjoy because really all you have are the choices you make and that's it and who knows after that. I think that's what I love in acting.

To me acting is a hobby and I'm inspired by it. And if I'm going to spend time doing something that I'm not really inspired to do, then why am I doing it? I don't know if that sounds sort of new agey or whatever, but it's true. I've been lucky enough to have a musical career that has gone pretty good and acting is something I have always wanted to do.

What has always been most interesting about acting to me personally is that it affords you the chance to shift gears, both in terms of the experiences you get to have through doing it, but also the different kinds of things you get to represent.

I always try to do something very different with each character because that's why I like to do this, because I can become someone else completely and it's fun.

I think rap was a better move for me but football's been my love since I learned how to walk. I was gonna be a running back or quarterback. That was my life. That was it but things happen for a reason. I wouldn't trade this in for nothing.