No my mom kind of led me toward acting. She wanted to be an actress when she was younger. That made me interested in it when I was a kid because she and I are very close.

A friend of my mom's was a casting director so really as kind of a lark I had a couple of acting jobs that had just enough exposure to give me the option to continue if I wanted to. I followed through with it.

Men acquire a particular quality by constantly acting in a particular way.

Redefining marriage will have huge implications for what is taught in our schools and for wider society. It will redefine society since the institution of marriage is one of the fundamental building blocks of society. The repercussions of enacting same-sex marriage into law will be immense.

Marriage requires a special talent like acting. Monogamy requires genius.

This is as true in everyday life as it is in battle: we are given one life and the decision is ours whether to wait for circumstances to make up our mind or whether to act and in acting to live.

Our country was thereby saved from the consequences of its distracting individualistic conception of democracy and its merely legal conception of nationality. It was because the followers of Jackson and Douglas did fight for it that the Union was preserved.

Acting classes I guess are good and I would like to maybe sometime take one. But I would feel like I was learning someone else's technique. I like mine.

I'm now learning how to distinguish when I'm acting and when I'm not acting - offstage as well as onstage.

I don't think any other city in the world... the sun doesn't shine the same way anywhere as it does in New York. And then I guess everyone's very good at hanging out. Not in a crazy way but you're just constantly interacting and learning.

I had an acting coach while I was doing the show and every week I could see my work improving. I really liked working on the show because I was learning new things every day.

That first year at Universal was a big blur and naturally I thought they were wasting me. I didn't realize at the time that I was learning my craft and acting more easily in front of the camera.

I've never gone to acting school and I never will so I'm learning about the business from the people who are in the business. It doesn't seem like I work at all. And the unknown is always exciting.

Acting is a life experience. I'm always learning things when I'm making a movie. So the fame part of it is fine when you consider what you get out of this job.

Acting has always existed alongside my normal life. It's been a case of learning on the job. I've worked in so many styles with so many people so I've picked bits up from everyone and everything.

Acting is not about dressing up. Acting is about stripping bare. The whole essence of learning lines is to forget them so you can make them sound like you thought of them that instant.

A man of knowledge lives by acting not by thinking about acting.

My work requires acting at its most committed - it demands actors of enormous resilience but also intelligence and wit. It doesn't work for narcissistic or selfish actors.

It is an accepted commonplace in psychology that the spiritual level of people acting as a crowd is far lower than the mean of each individual's intelligence or morality.

I've been acting my whole life. I have this huge imagination! I'm a dancer and my mom's a dance teacher and I was always performing and entertaining people. I'd go to see live theatre or a movie and I'd become the main character for a few days afterwards. I loved being somebody new for a temporary amount of time.

There's no great mystery to acting. It's a very simple thing to do but you have to work hard at it. It's about asking questions and using your imagination.

By going over your day in imagination before you begin it you can begin acting successfully at any moment.

On 'Into The Wild' I spent months risking my life and on 'Speed Racer' I spent 60 days acting in front of a green screen. No danger to my physical self but I sure had to use my imagination.

I think I'm an actor because I have very strong imagination and empathy. I never studied acting but those two qualities are exactly the qualities that make for an activist.