Motivational Quotes

Acting and actors

Acting is a matter of giving away secrets.

- Barkin, Ellen

Best Quotes about Acting and actors

Acting is happy agony.

Guiness, Sir Alec

You can't do four movies and be good to everybody and be flying all night and shooting all day with a different wig and then be going to sing on Broadway without feeling a little tired. You endlessly feel you're letting somebody down.

Parker, Sarah Jessica

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

Diderot, Denis

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

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

George, Boy

For an actress to be a success, she must have the face of Venus, the brains of a Minerva, the grace of Terpsichore, the memory of a Macaulay, the figure of Juno, and the hide of a rhinoceros.

Barrymore, Ethel

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

Field, Eugene

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

Shearer, Norma

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

Spacey, Kevin

10.

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

11.

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

Carrey, Jim

12.

The basic essential of a great actor is that he loves himself in acting.

Chaplin, Charlie

13.

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

Goldblum, Jeff

14.

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

Garland, Judy

15.

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

Fiske, Minnie

16.

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

17.

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

18.

In Europe an actor is an artist. In Hollywood, if he isn't working, he's a bum.

Quinn, Anthony

19.

Oh! it offends me to the soul to hear a robust periwig-pated fellow, tear a passion to tatters, to very rags, to split the ears of the groundlings.

Shakespeare, William

20.

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

Moreau, Jeanne

21.

I'd prefer not to be the pretty thing in a film. It's such a bloody responsibility to look cute, because people know when you don't and they're like, They're trying to pass her off as the cute girl and she's looking like a bedraggled sack of potatoes.

Driver, Minnie

22.

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

Fonda, Jane

23.

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

24.

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

Barthes, Roland

25.

The best actors do not let the wheels show.

Fonda, Henry

26.

Acting is a question of absorbing other people's personalities and adding some of your own experience.

Newman, Paul

27.

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

28.

Ah just act the way ah feel.

Presley, Elvis

29.

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

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.

If you give an audience a chance they will do half your acting for you.

Hepburn, Katharine

32.

The most difficult character in comedy is that of the fool, and he must be no simpleton that plays that part.

Cervantes, Miguel De

33.

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

34.

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

Wood, Elijah

35.

You are not in business to be popular.

Alley, Kirstie

36.

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

37.

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

Thomas, Jonathan Taylor

38.

I have to act to live.

Olivier, Sir Lawrence

39.

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

Howard, Ron

40.

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

41.

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

42.

An agent is a person who is sore because an actor gets 90% of what they make.

Johnson, Alva

43.

The most minor gifts and not a very high class way to earn a living. After all, Shirley Temple could do it at the age of four.

Hepburn, Katharine

44.

Acting is a matter of giving away secrets.

Barkin, Ellen

45.

Insecurity, commonly regarded as a weakness in normal people, is the basic tool of the actor's trade.

Richardson, Miranda

46.

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

47.

Remember: there are no small parts, only small actors.

Stanislavisky, Konstantin

48.

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

49.

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

50.

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