It is highly desirable for liquid crystal elastomer (LCE) based microactuators to activate and actuate in a highly controlled fashion without perturbing the surrounding environment. To reach this goal, in this study, a novel experimental protocol is developed to successfully incorporate gold nanosphere (AuNS) and gold nanorod (AuNR) into polyacrylate based LCE elastomer to fabricate LCE/AuNR and LCE/AuNS micropillars or microactuators. The effect of gold nanoparticle inclusion has been studied by spectroscopy (UV-vis-near-infrared), microscopy (transmission electron microscopy), thermal analysis (differential scanning calorimetry and thermogravimetric analysis), and x-ray scattering (wide-angle x-ray scattering and small-angle x-ray scattering). Finite element analysis is performed to examine the feasibility of utilizing the photothermal effect of AuNR/AuNS to enable photothermal actuation of LCE/AuNR and LCE/AuNS micropillars. The comparative experimental studies on the thermal and photothermal actuation behavior of the LCE, LCE/AuNS, and LCE/AuNR micropillar suggested that AuNR is an excellent candidate for developing high-performance LCE actuators with photothermal actuation capability. With inclusion of less than 1 wt% of AuNR, the very high maximum actuation strain (30%) and rapid response (a few seconds) have been achieved in LCE/AuNR micropillar actuators under 635 nm laser irradiation.