Motivational Quotes

Acting and actors

The actor searches vainly for the sound of a vanished tradition, and critic and audience follow suit. We have lost all sense of ritual and ceremony -- whether it be connected with Christmas, birthdays or funerals -- but the words remain with us and old impulses stir in the marrow. We feel we should have rituals, we should do something about getting them and we blame the artists for not finding them for us. So the artist sometimes attempts to find new rituals with only his imagination as his source: he imitates the outer form of ceremonies, pagan or baroque, unfortunately adding his own trapping -- the result is rarely convincing. And after the years and years of weaker and waterier imitations we now find ourselves rejecting the very notion of a holy stage. It is not the fault of the holy that it has become a middle-class weapon to keep the children good.

- Brook, Peter (Stephen Paul)

Best Quotes about Acting and actors

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

I have to act to live.

Olivier, Sir Lawrence

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

Do not try to push your way through to the front ranks of your profession; do not run after distinctions and rewards; but do your utmost to find an entry into the world of beauty.

Stanislavisky, Konstantin

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

Pacino, Al

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

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

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

Davis, Bette

Acting is happy agony.

Guiness, Sir Alec

10.

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

11.

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

Carrey, Jim

12.

A movie camera is like having someone you have a crush on watching you from afar-- you pretend it's not there.

Hannah, Daryl

13.

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

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor

14.

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

15.

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

16.

You are not in business to be popular.

Alley, Kirstie

17.

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

18.

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

19.

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

Richardson, Miranda

20.

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

21.

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

22.

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

Johnson, Alva

23.

I'm an actor. And I guess I've done so many movies I've achieved some high visibility. But a star? I guess I still think of myself as kind of a worker ant.

Whitaker, Forest

24.

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

Forrest, Edwin

25.

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

Amiel, Henri Frederic

26.

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

Python, Monty

27.

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

Moore, Mary Tyler

28.

A good many dramatic situations begin with screaming.

Fonda, Jane

29.

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

Stanislavisky, Konstantin

30.

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

31.

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

Hazlitt, William

32.

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

33.

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

34.

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

Sinden, Donald

35.

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

Irons, Jeremy

36.

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

Welles, Orson

37.

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

38.

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

39.

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

Thomas, Jonathan Taylor

40.

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

Close, Glenn

41.

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

42.

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

Stanislavisky, Konstantin

43.

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

Goldblum, Jeff

44.

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

Fiske, Minnie

45.

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

46.

Ah just act the way ah feel.

Presley, Elvis

47.

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

48.

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

49.

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

50.

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

Cervantes, Miguel De