Motivational Quotes

Acting and actors

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

Best Quotes about Acting and actors

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Lansbury, Angela

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

Carrey, Jim

Actors are one family over the entire world.

Woodard, Alfre

10.

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

11.

Acting doesn't bring anything to a text. On the contrary, it detracts from it.

Duras, Marguerite

12.

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

Goldblum, Jeff

13.

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

14.

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

15.

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

Stanislavisky, Konstantin

16.

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

Amiel, Henri Frederic

17.

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

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor

18.

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

Stanislavisky, Konstantin

19.

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

Python, Monty

20.

A lot of what acting is paying attention.

Redford, Robert

21.

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

22.

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

23.

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

John, Elton

24.

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

25.

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

26.

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

27.

I find myself fascinating.

Dreyfus, Richard

28.

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

29.

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

Howard, Ron

30.

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

Half, Robert

31.

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

32.

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

Leoni, Tea

33.

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

Marceau, Marcel

34.

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

35.

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

36.

You don't merely give over your creativity to making a film -- you give over your life! In theatre, by contrast, you live these two rather strange lives simultaneously; you have no option but to confront the mould on last night's washing-up.

Lewis, Daniel Day

37.

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.

Johnson, Samuel

38.

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

Quinn, Anthony

39.

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

40.

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

Irons, Jeremy

41.

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

42.

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

43.

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

44.

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

Fiske, Minnie

45.

An actor is only merchandise.

Chow Yun-Fat

46.

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.

47.

The actor's popularity is evanescent; applauded today, forgotten tomorrow.

Forrest, Edwin

48.

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

49.

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

50.

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