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

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

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

Close, Glenn

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

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

Welles, Orson

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

Forrest, Edwin

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

Shearer, Norma

You are not in business to be popular.

Alley, Kirstie

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

Duras, Marguerite

10.

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

11.

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

Thomas, Jonathan Taylor

12.

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

Chaplin, Charlie

13.

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

14.

Actors are one family over the entire world.

Woodard, Alfre

15.

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

John, Elton

16.

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

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.

Acting is happy agony.

Guiness, Sir Alec

19.

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

20.

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

Python, Monty

21.

Stage charm guarantees in advance an actor's hold on the audience, it helps him to carry over to large numbers of people his creative purposes. It enhances his roles and his art. Yet it is of utmost importance that he use this precious gift with prudence, wisdom, and modesty. It is a great shame when he does not realize this and goes on to exploit, to play on his ability to charm.

Stanislavisky, Konstantin

22.

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

Richardson, Miranda

23.

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

Wood, Elijah

24.

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

Irons, Jeremy

25.

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

Spacey, Kevin

26.

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

27.

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

28.

I never said all actors are cattle, what I said was all actors should be treated like cattle.

Hitchcock, Alfred

29.

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

Pacino, Al

30.

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

31.

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

Glass, George

32.

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

Stanislavisky, Konstantin

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.

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

Moore, Mary Tyler

35.

I don't get acting jobs because of my looks.

Baldwin, Alec

36.

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

37.

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

George, Boy

38.

I have to act to live.

Olivier, Sir Lawrence

39.

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

40.

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)

41.

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

Vaughan, Bill

42.

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

43.

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

44.

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

45.

The best actors do not let the wheels show.

Fonda, Henry

46.

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

Goldblum, Jeff

47.

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

Amiel, Henri Frederic

48.

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

49.

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

Davis, Bette

50.

Acting is the perfect idiot's profession.

Hepburn, Katharine