Motivational Quotes

Acting and actors

I am acquainted with no immaterial sensuality so delightful as good acting.

- Byron, Lord

Best Quotes about Acting and actors

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

Half, Robert

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

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

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor

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

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

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

Garland, Judy

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

Duras, Marguerite

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

Glass, George

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

Fonda, Jane

10.

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

Moore, Mary Tyler

11.

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

12.

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

13.

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

Leoni, Tea

14.

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

15.

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

Diderot, Denis

16.

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

17.

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

18.

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

19.

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

20.

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

Lansbury, Angela

21.

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

22.

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

23.

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

24.

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

Irons, Jeremy

25.

Remember this practical piece of advice: Never come into the theatre with mud on your feet. Leave your dust and dirt outside. Check your little worries, squabbles, petty difficulties with your outside clothing -- all the things that ruin your life and draw your attention away from your art -- at the door.

Stanislavisky, Konstantin

26.

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

Davis, Bette

27.

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

28.

Abused as we abuse it at present, dramatic art is in no sense cathartic; it is merely a form of emotional masturbation. It is the rarest thing to find a player who has not had his character affected for the worse by the practice of his profession. Nobody can make a habit of self-exhibition, nobody can exploit his personality for the sake of exercising a kind of hypnotic power over others, and remain untouched by the process.

Huxley, Aldous

29.

A lot of what acting is paying attention.

Redford, Robert

30.

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

Field, Eugene

31.

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

Thomas, Jonathan Taylor

32.

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

33.

The best actors do not let the wheels show.

Fonda, Henry

34.

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

35.

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

Amiel, Henri Frederic

36.

You name it and I've done it. I'd like to say I did it my way. But that line, I'm afraid, belongs to someone else.

Davis Jr., Sammy

37.

A man who strains himself on the stage is bound, if he is any good, to strain all the people sitting in the stalls.

Brecht, Bertolt

38.

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

39.

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

40.

You are not in business to be popular.

Alley, Kirstie

41.

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

Goldblum, Jeff

42.

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

John, Elton

43.

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

Marceau, Marcel

44.

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

Spacey, Kevin

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.

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

Wood, Elijah

47.

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

48.

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

Shearer, Norma

49.

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

Hazlitt, William

50.

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