To be powerful, a kiss should make a journey, be its own story--begin with hesitation, move to realization, then melt into bliss.
I can feel the power of the words doing the work. Must trust language more.
Daniel Day-Lewis and Sean Penn to me are the two best actors of all time. I'm just glad to have the pleasure to be in an era that they're acting while I'm acting. They're probably the best actors in my mind.
Unfortunately for critics and audiences alike, I have made several films, and some films with really terrific actors. And I say this at my own peril, but Marion Cotillard is the best actor I've ever worked with.
I figured most of the best actors around 20 years old would all be at drama school, where they're tied up and contractually can't work, so I saw there must be a gap in the market for a young actor like me.
Someone I met years ago explained to me the difference between a personality and an actor, a personality being Eddie Murphy or Roseanne Barr, and an actor being Morgan Freeman and Alfre Woodard or Marlon Brando.
When I was younger I saw a movie called 'Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid' with Paul Newman and Robert Redford. Those two actors and that movie was my inspiration to want to be an actor.
I didn't become an actor until I was an old man of 28 or 29. I declared to the world that I was an actor. Nobody heard me, but I did declare it.
I'm very cautious about talking about how actors got where they got, as though there is in fact a plan or a way. There is no plan, there is no way, there's no sure set, there's no handbook, on how to get to be an actor.
I just don't think that I could be the kind of actor I want to be and not be honest with myself. Honesty is very important to me as an actor and as a person. I didn't even think about it.
Most actors will tell you that it takes a while to figure out what you want to be because we just want to do everything we see on TV and don't know that 'actor' is a job yet.
I had to audition as an actor, and I got so tired of doing the same monologues over and over, so I started writing my own, and then I started selling them to other actors.
Every actor's different. It seems to me the older veterans, they don't need to hear as much. But younger actors need a little more feedback, a little more assurance, and that's fine.
I'm not saying that Sam J. Jones was Flash Gordon - there's no such thing. No actor can be the person, that's a bunch of crap. People pay to see an actor be himself, whether he plays Hamlet or whatever.
Actors get pigeonholed very quickly, particularly movie actors. In the theater, one is more used to casting people against type and trusting that their talent and skill will get them through.
I don't see myself as a 'black actor,' I'm just Shemar Moore the actor. I'm very proud to be black, but I'm just as much black as I am white.
I feel much more comfortable as a writer than an actor. I feel like I am a much better writer than I am an actor.
I think the world's a little smaller these days. With the Internet and the availability of people, the pool of English speaking actors - not just American actors, but Brits, Australians, New Zealanders, Irish. We're all up for grabs.
Being an actor: that's a pretty big net. That's a big playing field. The Screen Actors' Guild is filled with many, many, many, many people and vastly different careers.
You don't go to Berkeley to become an actor. In fact, I don't think you go to any school to become an actor. You've just sort of got to go out there and act.
And I think that's why I was going to be a musician. I was very rebellious. And I didn't want to be an actor. My father used to say to me you should be an actor if you want to be in the arts.
