Motivational Quotes

Acting and actors

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

- Baldwin, Alec

Best Quotes about Acting and actors

I am the Fred Astaire of karate.

Damme, Jean-Claude Van

The best actors do not let the wheels show.

Fonda, Henry

Abused as we abuse it at present, dramatic art is in no sense cathartic; it is merely a form of emotional masturbation. It is the rarest thing to find a player who has not had his character affected for the worse by the practice of his profession. Nobody can make a habit of self-exhibition, nobody can exploit his personality for the sake of exercising a kind of hypnotic power over others, and remain untouched by the process.

Huxley, Aldous

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

Wood, Elijah

There are no small parts. Only small actors.

Rogers, Ginger

An actor who knows his business ought to be able to make the London telephone directory sound enthralling.

Sinden, Donald

More than in any other performing arts the lack of respect for acting seems to spring from the fact that every layman considers himself a valid critic.

Hagen, Uta

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

Amiel, Henri Frederic

Somebody told me I should put a pebble in my mouth to cure my stuttering. Well, I tried it, and during a scene I swallowed the pebble. That was the end of that.

Davies, Marion

10.

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

John, Elton

11.

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

12.

All men practice the actor's art.

Petron

13.

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

14.

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

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor

15.

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.

Jackson, Glenda

16.

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

Fonda, Jane

17.

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

Half, Robert

18.

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

Moore, Mary Tyler

19.

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

Lansbury, Angela

20.

Actors are one family over the entire world.

Woodard, Alfre

21.

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

Garland, Judy

22.

You reach a point where you say you're not going to do juveniles any longer.

Howard, Ron

23.

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

24.

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

Baldwin, Alec

25.

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

Byron, Lord

26.

The real actor has a direct line to the collective heart.

Davis, Bette

27.

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

Carrey, Jim

28.

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

Welles, Orson

29.

She represents the un-vowed aspiration of the male human being, his potential infidelity -- and infidelity of a very special kind, which would lead him to the opposite of his wife, to the woman of wax whom he could model at will, make and unmake in any way he wished, even unto death.

Duras, Marguerite

30.

I don't want to read about some of these actresses who are around today. They sound like my niece in Scarsdale. I love my niece in Scarsdale, but I won't buy tickets to see her act.

Price, Vincent

31.

One forgets too easily the difference between a man and his image, and that there is none between the sound of his voice on the screen and in real life.

Bresson, Robert

32.

It's not a field, I think, for people who need to have success every day: if you can't live with a nightly sort of disaster, you should get out. I wouldn't describe myself as lacking in confidence, but I would just say that the ghosts you chase you never catch.

Malkovich, John

33.

Acting provides the fulfillment of never being fulfilled. You're never as good as you'd like to be. So there's always something to hope for.

Jackson, Glenda

34.

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

Python, Monty

35.

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

Leoni, Tea

36.

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

37.

Ah just act the way ah feel.

Presley, Elvis

38.

This is not a tough job. You read a script. If you like the part and the money is O.K., you do it. Then you remember your lines. You show up on time. You do what the director tells you to do. When you finish, you rest and then go on to the next part. That's it.

Mitchum, Robert

39.

I think every American actor wants to be a movie star. But I never wanted to do stupid movies, I wanted to do films. I vowed I would never do a commercial, nor would I do a soap opera -- both of which I did as soon as I left the [Acting] Company and was starving.

Kline, Kevin

40.

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

41.

The thing about performance, even if it's only an illusion, is that it is a celebration of the fact that we do contain within ourselves infinite possibilities.

Lewis, Daniel Day

42.

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

43.

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

44.

Acting deals with very delicate emotions. It is not putting up a mask. Each time an actor acts he does not hide; he exposes himself.

Moreau, Jeanne

45.

An actor is a guy who, if you ain't talking about him, he ain't listening.

Glass, George

46.

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

47.

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

George, Boy

48.

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

Stanislavisky, Konstantin

49.

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

50.

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

Cusack, John