Motivational Quotes

Acting and actors

Stage charm guarantees in advance an actor's hold on the audience, it helps him to carry over to large numbers of people his creative purposes. It enhances his roles and his art. Yet it is of utmost importance that he use this precious gift with prudence, wisdom, and modesty. It is a great shame when he does not realize this and goes on to exploit, to play on his ability to charm.

- Stanislavisky, Konstantin

Best Quotes about Acting and actors

Celebrity is death --- celebrity -- that's the worst thing that can happen to an actor.

Cusack, John

Actors often behave like children, and so we're taken for children. I want to be grown up.

Irons, Jeremy

Left eyebrow raised, right eyebrow raised.

Moore, Roger

Imagination, industry, and intelligence -- the three I s -- are all indispensable to the actress, but of these three the greatest is, without doubt, imagination.

Terry, Ellen

Mr. Clarke played the King all evening as though under constant fear that someone else was about to play the Ace.

Field, Eugene

Acting is the expression of a neurotic impulse. It's a bum's life. The principal benefit acting has afforded me is the money to pay for my psychoanalysis.

Brando, Marlon

Every time I get a script it's a matter of trying to know what I could do with it. I see colors, imagery. It has to have a smell. It's like falling in love. You can't give a reason why.

Olin, Lena

People say I'm cocky, but am I supposed to sit here and be insecure and not know where my future's going or not realize that moviemaking is the greatest thing to happen to me?

Lewis, Juliette

Until Ace Ventura, no actor had considered talking through his ass.

Carrey, Jim

10.

All men practice the actor's art.

Petron

11.

Acting on a good idea is better than just having a good idea.

Half, Robert

12.

Acting is happy agony.

Guiness, Sir Alec

13.

You name it and I've done it. I'd like to say I did it my way. But that line, I'm afraid, belongs to someone else.

Davis Jr., Sammy

14.

The actors today really need the whip hand. They're so lazy. They haven't got the sense of pride in their profession that the less socially elevated musical comedy and music hall people or acrobats have. The theater has never been any good since the actors became gentlemen.

Auden, W. H.

15.

Some people are addicts. If they don't act, they don't exist.

Moreau, Jeanne

16.

The mug is a tool. My ace in the hole. To have looks is the bonus on top of what motivates me to be an actor. Not to realize they're an asset would be counterproductive to the cause; they serve the common good.

Zane, Billy

17.

To grasp the full significance of life is the actor's duty, to interpret it is his problem, and to express it his dedication.

Brando, Marlon

18.

Actors ought to be larger than life. You come across quite enough ordinary, nondescript people in daily life and I don't see why you should be subjected to them on the stage too.

Sinden, Donald

19.

The face of Garbo is an Idea, that of Hepburn an Event.

Barthes, Roland

20.

The popularity of that baby-faced boy, who possessed not even the elements of a good actor, was a hallucination in the public mind, and a disgrace to our theatrical history.

Campbell, Thomas

21.

When I was a fireman I was in a lot of burning buildings. It was a great job, the only job I ever had that compares with the thrill of acting. Before going into a fire, there's the same surge of adrenaline you get just before the camera rolls.

Buscemi, Steve

22.

After Blood Simple, everybody thought I was from Texas. After Mississippi Burning, everybody thought I was from Mississippi and uneducated. After Fargo, everybody's going to think I'm from Minnesota, pregnant, and have blonde hair. I don't think you can ever completely transform yourself on film, but if you do your job well, you can make people believe that you're the character you're trying to be.

McDormand, Frances

23.

Actors are one family over the entire world.

Woodard, Alfre

24.

If you have to be in a soap opera try not to get the worst role.

George, Boy

25.

First of all, I choose the great [roles], and if none of these come, I choose the mediocre ones, and if they don't come, I choose the ones that pay the rent.

Caine, Michael

26.

It's a business you go into because you're an egocentric. It's a very embarrassing profession.

Hepburn, Katharine

27.

You spend all your life trying to do something they put people in asylums for.

Fonda, Jane

28.

Actors are loved because they are unoriginal. Actors stick to their script. The unoriginal man is loved by the mediocrity because this kind of artistic expression is something to which the merest five-eighth can climb.

Kavanagh, Patrick

29.

I have often seen an actor laugh off the stage, but I don't remember ever having seen one weep.

Diderot, Denis

30.

Remember this practical piece of advice: Never come into the theatre with mud on your feet. Leave your dust and dirt outside. Check your little worries, squabbles, petty difficulties with your outside clothing -- all the things that ruin your life and draw your attention away from your art -- at the door.

Stanislavisky, Konstantin

31.

Unless the theatre can ennoble you, make you a better person, you should flee from it.

Stanislavisky, Konstantin

32.

I was planning to go into architecture. But when I arrived, architecture was filled up. Acting was right next to it, so I signed up for acting instead. [On his college registration experience]

Selleck, Tom

33.

If I wasn't an actor, I'd be a secret agent.

Wood, Elijah

34.

Acting is the perfect idiot's profession.

Hepburn, Katharine

35.

I don't do T & A very well because I haven't got much of either.

Leoni, Tea

36.

Actors die so loud.

Miller, Henry

37.

I can't tell you how many shows I've done with full-blown migraine headaches.

Thomas, Jonathan Taylor

38.

We become actors without realizing it, and actors without wanting to.

Amiel, Henri Frederic

39.

For the theatre one needs long arms; it is better to have them too long than too short. An artiste with short arms can never, never make a fine gesture.

Bernhardt, Sarah

40.

I don't think there's a punch-line scheduled, is there?

Python, Monty

41.

Every actor in his heart believes everything bad that's printed about him.

Welles, Orson

42.

I have tried to be as eclectic as I possibly can with my professional life, and so far it's been pretty fun.

Hunter, Holly

43.

I just stopped playing bitches on wheels and peoples' mothers. I have only a few more years to kick up my heels!

Lansbury, Angela

44.

A true priest is aware of the presence of the altar during every moment that he is conducting a service. It is exactly the same way that a true artist should react to the stage all the time he is in the theater. An actor who is incapable of this feeling will never be a true artist.

Stanislavisky, Konstantin

45.

Why, except as a means of livelihood, a man should desire to act on the stage when he has the whole world to act in, is not clear to me.

Shaw, George Bernard

46.

I am acquainted with no immaterial sensuality so delightful as good acting.

Byron, Lord

47.

You know how in high school you do these plays and people come up after the show and they're really excited for you? Well, that's what's happening to me right now.

Sorvino, Mira

48.

Ah just act the way ah feel.

Presley, Elvis

49.

I'm not handsome in the classical sense. The eyes droop, the mouth is crooked, the teeth aren't straight, the voice sounds like a Mafioso pallbearer, but somehow it all works.

Stallone, Sylvester

50.

The main factor in any form of creativeness is the life of a human spirit, that of the actor and his part, their joint feelings and subconscious creation.

Stanislavisky, Konstantin