Motivational Quotes

Acting and actors

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

Best Quotes about Acting and actors

The hardest part has been maintaining a small head--remaining down to earth. So many people try to make you more than you are. This business has changed a lot of good people and a lot of good families, and I don't want that to happen to me.

Brandy

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

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

Spacey, Kevin

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

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

Baldwin, Alec

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

Moore, Mary Tyler

I am the Fred Astaire of karate.

Damme, Jean-Claude Van

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

Quinn, Anthony

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

Forrest, Edwin

10.

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

11.

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

12.

To grasp the full significance of life is the actor's duty, to interpret it is his problem, and to express it his dedication.

Brando, Marlon

13.

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

14.

Acting is a matter of giving away secrets.

Barkin, Ellen

15.

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

Close, Glenn

16.

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

Goldblum, Jeff

17.

You don't merely give over your creativity to making a film -- you give over your life! In theatre, by contrast, you live these two rather strange lives simultaneously; you have no option but to confront the mould on last night's washing-up.

Lewis, Daniel Day

18.

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

Vaughan, Bill

19.

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

Leoni, Tea

20.

I think every American actor wants to be a movie star. But I never wanted to do stupid movies, I wanted to do films. I vowed I would never do a commercial, nor would I do a soap opera -- both of which I did as soon as I left the [Acting] Company and was starving.

Kline, Kevin

21.

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

John, Elton

22.

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

23.

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

24.

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

25.

I find myself fascinating.

Dreyfus, Richard

26.

There are no small parts. Only small actors.

Rogers, Ginger

27.

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

Wood, Elijah

28.

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

29.

I was planning to go into architecture. But when I arrived, architecture was filled up. Acting was right next to it, so I signed up for acting instead. [On his college registration experience]

Selleck, Tom

30.

I regard the theatre as the greatest of all art forms, the most immediate way in which a human being can share with another the sense of what it is to be a human being.

Wilder, Thornton

31.

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

Python, Monty

32.

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

Amiel, Henri Frederic

33.

We are born at the rise of the curtain and we die with its fall, and every night in the presence of our patrons we write our new creation, and every night it is blotted out forever; and of what use is it to say to audience or to critic, Ah, but you should have seen me last Tuesday?

Macliammoir, Micheal

34.

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

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor

35.

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

Richardson, Miranda

36.

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

Barthes, Roland

37.

All men practice the actor's art.

Petron

38.

Some people are addicts. If they don't act, they don't exist.

Moreau, Jeanne

39.

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

40.

A good many dramatic situations begin with screaming.

Fonda, Jane

41.

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

Lansbury, Angela

42.

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

Byron, Lord

43.

Actors are one family over the entire world.

Woodard, Alfre

44.

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

45.

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

Thomas, Jonathan Taylor

46.

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

Marceau, Marcel

47.

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

48.

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

Sinden, Donald

49.

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

50.

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