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

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

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

Lansbury, Angela

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

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

Hazlitt, William

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

A good many dramatic situations begin with screaming.

Fonda, Jane

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

Davis, Bette

An actor is only merchandise.

Chow Yun-Fat

10.

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

11.

I find myself fascinating.

Dreyfus, Richard

12.

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

Johnson, Alva

13.

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

Close, Glenn

14.

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

15.

Ah just act the way ah feel.

Presley, Elvis

16.

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

Welles, Orson

17.

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

Hepburn, Katharine

18.

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

19.

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

20.

Acting is the perfect idiot's profession.

Hepburn, Katharine

21.

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

Thomas, Jonathan Taylor

22.

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

Fiske, Minnie

23.

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

24.

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

Newman, Paul

25.

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

26.

You are not in business to be popular.

Alley, Kirstie

27.

All men practice the actor's art.

Petron

28.

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

Glass, George

29.

If you have to be in a soap opera try not to get the worst role.

George, Boy

30.

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

31.

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

Shearer, Norma

32.

It's a business you go into because you're an egocentric. It's a very embarrassing profession.

Hepburn, Katharine

33.

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

34.

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

35.

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

36.

A lot of what acting is paying attention.

Redford, Robert

37.

If a farmer fills his barn with grain, he gets mice. If he leaves it empty, he gets actors.

Vaughan, Bill

38.

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

39.

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

40.

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

41.

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

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor

42.

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

43.

I have to act to live.

Olivier, Sir Lawrence

44.

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

45.

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

Garland, Judy

46.

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

47.

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

48.

One forgets too easily the difference between a man and his image, and that there is none between the sound of his voice on the screen and in real life.

Bresson, Robert

49.

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

Irons, Jeremy

50.

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

Duras, Marguerite