Motivational Quotes

Acting and actors

Until Ace Ventura, no actor had considered talking through his ass.

- Carrey, Jim

Best Quotes about Acting and actors

Show me a great actor and I'll show you a lousy husband. Show me a great actress, and you've seen the devil.

Fields, W. C.

Some scenes you juggle two balls, some scenes you juggle three balls, some scenes you can juggle five balls. The key is always to speak in your own voice. Speak the truth. That's Acting 101. Then you start putting layers on top of that. [On his acting techniques]

D'Onofrio, Vincent

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

Pacino, Al

Until Ace Ventura, no actor had considered talking through his ass.

Carrey, Jim

Unless the theatre can ennoble you, make you a better person, you should flee from it.

Stanislavisky, Konstantin

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

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

Quinn, Anthony

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

Half, Robert

A good many dramatic situations begin with screaming.

Fonda, Jane

10.

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

11.

There are no small parts. Only small actors.

Rogers, Ginger

12.

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

George, Boy

13.

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

14.

A lot of what acting is paying attention.

Redford, Robert

15.

I am the Fred Astaire of karate.

Damme, Jean-Claude Van

16.

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

Fiske, Minnie

17.

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

Duras, Marguerite

18.

I'm an actor. And I guess I've done so many movies I've achieved some high visibility. But a star? I guess I still think of myself as kind of a worker ant.

Whitaker, Forest

19.

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

20.

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

21.

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

22.

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

23.

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

Hepburn, Katharine

24.

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

25.

An actor is only merchandise.

Chow Yun-Fat

26.

I have to act to live.

Olivier, Sir Lawrence

27.

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

Forrest, Edwin

28.

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

Welles, Orson

29.

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

30.

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

Thomas, Jonathan Taylor

31.

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

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor

32.

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

Irons, Jeremy

33.

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

34.

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

35.

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

36.

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

37.

Actors die so loud.

Miller, Henry

38.

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

39.

I find myself fascinating.

Dreyfus, Richard

40.

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

41.

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

Python, Monty

42.

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

43.

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

44.

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

Vaughan, Bill

45.

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

Leoni, Tea

46.

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

47.

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

Lansbury, Angela

48.

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

49.

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

50.

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