Motivational Quotes

Acting and actors

Acting is a matter of giving away secrets.

- Barkin, Ellen

Best Quotes about Acting and actors

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

Fonda, Jane

Actors are one family over the entire world.

Woodard, Alfre

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

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

Amiel, Henri Frederic

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

Glass, George

The actor becomes an emotional athlete. The process is painful -- my personal life suffers.

Pacino, Al

There are no small parts. Only small actors.

Rogers, Ginger

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

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor

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

10.

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

Field, Eugene

11.

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

Baldwin, Alec

12.

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

Leoni, Tea

13.

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

Davis, Bette

14.

They are, as it were, train-bearers in the pageant of life, and hold a glass up to humanity, frailer than itself. We see ourselves at second-hand in them: they show us all that we are, all that we wish to be, and all that we dread to be. What brings the resemblance nearer is, that, as they imitate us, we, in our turn, imitate them. There is no class of society whom so many persons regard with affection as actors.

Hazlitt, William

15.

A good many dramatic situations begin with screaming.

Fonda, Jane

16.

Left eyebrow raised, right eyebrow raised.

Moore, Roger

17.

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

18.

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

19.

Acting is a matter of giving away secrets.

Barkin, Ellen

20.

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

Half, Robert

21.

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

Moreau, Jeanne

22.

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

Python, Monty

23.

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

Cusack, John

24.

Ah just act the way ah feel.

Presley, Elvis

25.

I was sitting in the looping studio late one night, and I had this epiphany that they weren't paying me for my acting, for God's sake, but to own me. And from then on, it became clear and an awful lot easier to deal with.

Lawless, Lucy

26.

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

27.

I am the Fred Astaire of karate.

Damme, Jean-Claude Van

28.

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

29.

Acting is happy agony.

Guiness, Sir Alec

30.

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

Diderot, Denis

31.

From '86 until the summer of last year, wherever I went, people would say, You would have made a great James Bond! Weren't you going to be James Bond? You should have been, you could have been, you may have been. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. It was like unfinished business in my life. I couldn't say no to it this time around.

Brosnan, Pierce

32.

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

Wood, Elijah

33.

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

34.

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

Shearer, Norma

35.

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

36.

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

Goldblum, Jeff

37.

They are the only honest hypocrites, their life is a voluntary dream, a studied madness.

Hazlitt, William

38.

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

39.

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

40.

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

41.

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

Lansbury, Angela

42.

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

Moore, Mary Tyler

43.

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

44.

I have spent more than half a lifetime trying to express the tragic moment.

Marceau, Marcel

45.

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

46.

Actors die so loud.

Miller, Henry

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.

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

Barthes, Roland

49.

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

50.

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

Irons, Jeremy