Motivational Quotes

Acting and actors

I don't get acting jobs because of my looks.

- Baldwin, Alec

Best Quotes about Acting and actors

Acting is nothing more or less than playing. The idea is to humanize life.

Goldblum, Jeff

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

Acting is a matter of giving away secrets.

Barkin, Ellen

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

Hepburn, Katharine

The great actors are the luminous ones. They are the great conductors of the stage.

Fiske, Minnie

I'm an actor. And I guess I've done so many movies I've achieved some high visibility. But a star? I guess I still think of myself as kind of a worker ant.

Whitaker, Forest

I mean, the question actors most often get asked is how they can bear saying the same things over and over again, night after night, but God knows the answer to that is, don't we all anyway; might as well get paid for it.

Dundy, Elaine

I never said all actors are cattle, what I said was all actors should be treated like cattle.

Hitchcock, Alfred

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

10.

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

Cusack, John

11.

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

Half, Robert

12.

Such is an actor's life. We must ride the waves of every film, barfing occasionally, yet maintain our dignity, even as the bulk of our Herculean efforts are keel-hauled before our very eyes. [On filming MacHale's Navy]

Campbell, Bruce

13.

I don't get acting jobs because of my looks.

Baldwin, Alec

14.

To see him act is like reading Shakespeare by flashes of lightning.

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor

15.

Acting is happy agony.

Guiness, Sir Alec

16.

Some scenes you juggle two balls, some scenes you juggle three balls, some scenes you can juggle five balls. The key is always to speak in your own voice. Speak the truth. That's Acting 101. Then you start putting layers on top of that. [On his acting techniques]

D'Onofrio, Vincent

17.

I really think that effective acting has to do literally with the movement of molecules.

Close, Glenn

18.

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

19.

A man who strains himself on the stage is bound, if he is any good, to strain all the people sitting in the stalls.

Brecht, Bertolt

20.

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

George, Boy

21.

I regard the theatre as the greatest of all art forms, the most immediate way in which a human being can share with another the sense of what it is to be a human being.

Wilder, Thornton

22.

I have to act to live.

Olivier, Sir Lawrence

23.

Talk to them about things they don't know. Try to give them an inferiority complex. If the actress is beautiful, screw her. If she isn't, present her with a valuable painting she will not understand. If they insist on being boring, kick their asses or twist their noses. And that's about all there is to it.

Huston, John

24.

There were many times my pants were so thin I could sit on a dime and tell if it was heads or tails.

Tracy, Spencer

25.

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

26.

Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounced it to you -- tripping on the tongue; but if you mouth it, as many of your players do, I had as Leif the town-crier spoke my lines. Nor do not saw the air too much with your hand, thus, but use all gently; for in the very torrent, tempest, and as I may say, the whirlwind of your passion, you must acquire and beget a temperance that may give it smoothness.

Shakespeare, William

27.

I'm disappointed in acting as a craft. I want everything to go back to Orson Welles and fake noses and changing your voice. It's become so much about personality.

Ulrich, Skeet

28.

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

29.

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

30.

In civilized life, where the happiness and indeed almost the existence of man, depends on the opinion of his fellow men. He is constantly acting a studied part.

Irving, Washington

31.

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

32.

Show me a great actor and I'll show you a lousy husband. Show me a great actress, and you've seen the devil.

Fields, W. C.

33.

The mere mechanical technique of acting can be taught, but the spirit that is to give life to lifeless forms must be born in a man. No dramatic college can teach its pupils to think or to feel. It is Nature who makes our artists for us, though it may be Art who taught them their right mode of expression.

Wilde, Oscar

34.

The hardest part has been maintaining a small head--remaining down to earth. So many people try to make you more than you are. This business has changed a lot of good people and a lot of good families, and I don't want that to happen to me.

Brandy

35.

I think I am a much better actor than I have allowed myself to be.

Spacey, Kevin

36.

Actors are one family over the entire world.

Woodard, Alfre

37.

An actress must never lose her ego--without it she has no talent.

Shearer, Norma

38.

A lot of what acting is paying attention.

Redford, Robert

39.

Do not try to push your way through to the front ranks of your profession; do not run after distinctions and rewards; but do your utmost to find an entry into the world of beauty.

Stanislavisky, Konstantin

40.

I want to do a musical movie. Like Evita, but with good music.

John, Elton

41.

I was born at the age of twelve on a Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer lot.

Garland, Judy

42.

I'm not an actress who can create a character. I play me.

Moore, Mary Tyler

43.

Players, Sir! I look on them as no better than creatures set upon tables and joint stools to make faces and produce laughter, like dancing dogs.