Motivational Quotes

Acting and actors

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

- Barthes, Roland

Best Quotes about Acting and actors

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

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

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

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

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

Field, Eugene

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

Thomas, Jonathan Taylor

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

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

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

10.

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

Richardson, Miranda

11.

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

Chaplin, Charlie

12.

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

Fonda, Jane

13.

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

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor

14.

A good many dramatic situations begin with screaming.

Fonda, Jane

15.

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

Johnson, Alva

16.

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

17.

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

18.

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

Marceau, Marcel

19.

I'm an assistant storyteller. It's like being a waiter or a gas-station attendant, but I'm waiting on six million people a week, if I'm lucky. [On being an actor]

Ford, Harrison

20.

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

Hazlitt, William

21.

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

Newman, Paul

22.

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

23.

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

24.

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

Pacino, Al

25.

I am the Fred Astaire of karate.

Damme, Jean-Claude Van

26.

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

Spacey, Kevin

27.

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

28.

I have to act to live.

Olivier, Sir Lawrence

29.

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

Close, Glenn

30.

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

Moore, Mary Tyler

31.

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

32.

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

John, Elton

33.

Acting is a matter of giving away secrets.

Barkin, Ellen

34.

A lot of what acting is paying attention.

Redford, Robert

35.

I find myself fascinating.

Dreyfus, Richard

36.

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

37.

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

38.

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

39.

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

Hepburn, Katharine

40.

An actor is only merchandise.

Chow Yun-Fat

41.

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

Fiske, Minnie

42.

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

43.

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

44.

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

45.

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

Diderot, Denis

46.

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

Cervantes, Miguel De

47.

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

48.

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

Forrest, Edwin

49.

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

Quinn, Anthony

50.

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

Stanislavisky, Konstantin