Motivational Quotes

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

Best Quotes about Acting and actors

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

Byron, Lord

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

Python, Monty

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

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

Chaplin, Charlie

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

John, Elton

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

Hepburn, Katharine

Acting is a matter of giving away secrets.

Barkin, Ellen

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

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

10.

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

Spacey, Kevin

11.

Ah just act the way ah feel.

Presley, Elvis

12.

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

Cervantes, Miguel De

13.

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

14.

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

15.

The best actors do not let the wheels show.

Fonda, Henry

16.

All men practice the actor's art.

Petron

17.

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

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.

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

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.

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

22.

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

Irons, Jeremy

23.

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

Fiske, Minnie

24.

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

Glass, George

25.

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

26.

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

Thomas, Jonathan Taylor

27.

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

Forrest, Edwin

28.

Talk to them about things they don't know. Try to give them an inferiority complex. If the actress is beautiful, screw her. If she isn't, present her with a valuable painting she will not understand. If they insist on being boring, kick their asses or twist their noses. And that's about all there is to it.

Huston, John

29.

There are no small parts. Only small actors.

Rogers, Ginger

30.

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

Diderot, Denis

31.

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

Lansbury, Angela

32.

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

Amiel, Henri Frederic

33.

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

Hazlitt, William

34.

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

35.

I have to act to live.

Olivier, Sir Lawrence

36.

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

Vaughan, Bill

37.

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

Hannah, Daryl

38.

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

39.

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

Johnson, Alva

40.

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

Baldwin, Alec

41.

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

42.

Left eyebrow raised, right eyebrow raised.

Moore, Roger

43.

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

Pacino, Al

44.

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

45.

Acting is the perfect idiot's profession.

Hepburn, Katharine

46.

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

47.

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

48.

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

49.

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

50.

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

Half, Robert