Hill Harper Quotes

My work is to reach people with ideas, hopes, dreams, encouragement, insight, and revelation. That's what an actor wants to do.

I am not interested in entertaining people. I think being an actor provides an opportunity to give people an experience they can connect to, reflect on, learn from, laugh at.

I just want to tell stories that are meaningful and have inspiration to them; people can watch it and take away something, or maybe they'll just think about themselves differently or think about the world differently. I just want to create characters that live on.

When I started acting, I thought everything should be issue-based and that there should be a helpline at the end of every program.

I think that's something that people feel that I do really well; I don't mind it, because ultimately I think the characters I play move people, and who wouldn't want to move people?

All I've ever wanted to do as an actor was move people.

I've always loved musical films; I find them really thrilling and exciting; it was part of what made me want to be an actress, that feeling of being really transported.

If you start to disrespect the character you're playing, or play it too much for laughs, that can work for a sketch, it will sell some gags, but it's all technique. It's like watching a juggler - you can be impressed by it, but it's not going to touch you in any way.

One of the things about acting is it allows you to live other people's lives without having to pay the price.

That's why I'm an actress - escaping into a world.

One of the things I like about acting is that, in a funny way, I come back to myself.

'Sophie's Choice' is actually the reason I became an actress.

People come to the theatre to be excited and uplifted - I want to inspire my audience.

Acting has always been a way for me to express myself, and show all my vulnerabilities and flaws through my characters.

I get to play characters that kind of shock people and I enjoy doing that. I like characters that have meaning and get people in the heart. I want to be able to get people to cry or make people angry or sad.

If a show is good, it helps people learn about themselves in some way and in some function. Whatever the genre is, if it's executed well, audiences grow and learn from it, and that's where their passion and enthusiasm comes from.

I became an actress to provoke people and move people and to tell the stories.

Acting is about enhancing your life, not representing something that's missing.

Doing acting opened up other creative outlets; it made me feel freer as an artist.

A great byproduct of a TV show, movie, or play is when it can act as a catalyst for someone.

At the end of the day, I just want a movie that's great, that people are going to love and laugh at and be affected by, and also have an emotional journey.

My job playing Sam Malone was to let the audience in, to love my bar full of people. And that informed my life.

You may think it's very presumptuous, but I really hope that my movies are going to turn people into better people.

It was kind of enlightening to become a playwright.

In a weird way, I live vicariously through the characters I play as an actor.