John Jeremiah Sullivan Quotes

I think if you're good and you can persuade people you're going to be able to do that role and ultimately the audience buys it, then it doesn't matter whether you were really a chimpanzee in disguise! You've done it.

But then acting is all about faking. We're all very good at faking things that we have no competence with.

That's what show business is, sincere insincerity.

I was a terrific liar as a child, and I believe my lies. So it's a natural step into acting.

We're actors. We're the opposite of people.

Well, you know what they say in Hollywood - the most important thing is being sincere, even if you have to fake it.

Acting is like lying. The art of lying well. I'm paid to tell elaborate lies.

You scratch a preacher a little bit, and you'll get an actor.

Before I was known, I would go on stage and pretend I was other people. Once I pretended I was mentally handicapped. It was really wrong. One time I was a bad magician. And one time I pretended I was a Christian comic.

Penn & Teller stopped doing practical jokes, and the reason is we got much too good at it.

Acting is acting.

An actor is someone who pretends to be somebody else. A movie star is somebody who pretends that somebody else is them.

Acting is a nice childish profession - pretending you're someone else and, at the same time, selling yourself.

People assume actors are born liars, but I'd argue the actor's job is to tell the truth. And I've realised I'm not a good liar.

It's a challenge, writing about actors, especially a good actor, because you can't always tell when they're being honest and when they're pretending - that is, when they're acting. The really good ones don't always seem to know themselves.

Drama is easy to fool people with, but you can't trick people into laughing.

We all have our secrets, and we all have our deceptions. Acting, at its best, is all about deceiving people, and this makes it all the more interesting to us.

Before I saw 'Tootsie' with an audience, I thought, 'No one is going to believe this could convince anyone he's a woman.'

Acting is bluffing, pretending to be something.

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

Perhaps one never seems so much at ones ease as when one has to play a part.

Acting is not a state of being ... but a state of appearing to be.

What is acting but lying and what is good lying but convincing lying?

Of all the things I do, acting is the thing that grabs most, but there's another level on which it strikes me as being a little silly. In the end you're dressing up and deciding to be somebody.

It's fun to look at people that are so good at acting that aren't actors, like David Bowie creating a mystique about rock n' roll.