Acting Schools Quotes

I definitely knew I wanted to be an actor in high school. I was doing plays and musicals, and I loved 'Saturday Night Live' and thought that was what I wanted to do - funny sketches and comedies. So I knew then, but I didn't know how to go about it, but I found my way.

Once I was in L.A., I realized anyone could act. Why not give it a shot? I started going to a ton of acting classes, and I found I had a real passion for it, probably the biggest passion I've ever had in my whole life.

I think for a lot of people, acting becomes a lifestyle, especially when you're living in Los Angeles.

A lot of people are attracted to the acting profession because they think it's a cheap, easy, free ride. It really isn't.

In my day England, Scotland, Wales had 80 drama schools. There are none left. So there's no training, no discipline.

I thought actors were born in Hollywood. I didn't know how to go about it.

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.

There's so much crap talked about acting.

When I was 15, 16, I studied with Stella Adler at the Conservatory of Acting, then I stopped again and went to the Actors Studio when I was 18.

Growing up on Mad Men with so many incredible actors and then going on to other things with amazing people, I never had any formal acting training, but they are all acting schools, basically. Just watching and learning from the best is insane. It's like having an internship and watching all these amazing people doing their work. You just soak it up like a sponge, hopefully.

I know what it's like to have a dream. I know what it's like to roll the dice and say, 'I'm going to go after this thing,' and nothing turns my stomach quicker than acting teachers or acting schools that look at a bunch of dreamers and say, 'We can help,' when they know full well that they can't.

I've always known I wanted to be an actress. I didn't know quite how I was going to get there because I come from a small town called Simpsonville, South Carolina.

Lee Strasberg taught me different ways in which a scene can be approached so that it is perfect. Acting schools also open you up - you react differently to each scene. It makes you a very reactive person.

There are lots of people in the world who do have the advantage of going to a good drama school and just decide that they want to be actors. There's nothing wrong with an untrained actor; they have to get their training somehow, they have to learn.

My advice has always been to study the craft of acting if you want to be an actor. There are many great schools that teach acting. NYU being one of them.

Nowadays, kids... young actors... they go straight to L.A. before they've even done anything.

I never had any acting heroes. I never really went to the theatre.

I knew I wanted to be an actor but didn't know how to go about it. That's why my ambition, initially, was not to play a lead role in a Bollywood film.

I think, for any actor, L.A. is where it all seems to be.

British actors come at acting from a slightly different angle. Because a lot of the films are cast out there, they are so used to the angle from which the Americans, and certainly the young guys from L.A., are coming at it, that I think it's interesting for them to find these English actors who maybe approach acting from a different place.

In L.A., I was meeting people who were all actors. My mind started to open up to what acting was. I didn't realize that Brad Pitt was a real person. I didn't think he was a robot or a machine, but I thought you were just born into acting - that it's a family tree, kind of like NASCAR. No one can just say, 'Hey, I'm going to be a NASCAR driver.'

I think I got into acting because I kind of had not much else to do! I guess I was kind of looking for something challenging. I heard about the London Theater scene and it was very different from the upbringing that I had and it felt like a challenge. And the whole sort of London Theater schools, I was told that 6,000 apply and there are like 30 accepted to each one. I was like, "Yeah. Let's see if we can do that!"

When I came to Mumbai, I had no experience in acting 'til I actually did it.

The basics of acting are really better in America than in Europe. Just the basic "fake laugh" is impossible to get in France.

I always had an interest in wanting to act, but my family wasn't in the entertainment industry at all, and we didn't know anyone. We didn't really even know how you begin to crack that nut.