Motivational Quotes

Acting and actors

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

- Cervantes, Miguel De

Best Quotes about Acting and actors

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

Johnson, Alva

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

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

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

Stanislavisky, Konstantin

The best actors do not let the wheels show.

Fonda, Henry

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

Acting is the perfect idiot's profession.

Hepburn, Katharine

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

Amiel, Henri Frederic

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

Glass, George

10.

Actors are one family over the entire world.

Woodard, Alfre

11.

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

12.

Every time I get a script it's a matter of trying to know what I could do with it. I see colors, imagery. It has to have a smell. It's like falling in love. You can't give a reason why.

Olin, Lena

13.

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

14.

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

Lansbury, Angela

15.

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

16.

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

17.

Acting is happy agony.

Guiness, Sir Alec

18.

Ah just act the way ah feel.

Presley, Elvis

19.

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

Leoni, Tea

20.

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

Hazlitt, William

21.

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

Barthes, Roland

22.

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

Hannah, Daryl

23.

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

24.

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

25.

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

Hitchcock, Alfred

26.

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

Shearer, Norma

27.

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

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor

28.

Mr. Clarke played the King all evening as though under constant fear that someone else was about to play the Ace.

Field, Eugene

29.

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

Half, Robert

30.

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

Pacino, Al

31.

Actors die so loud.

Miller, Henry

32.

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

Moreau, Jeanne

33.

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

34.

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)

35.

I find myself fascinating.

Dreyfus, Richard

36.

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

Forrest, Edwin

37.

A good many dramatic situations begin with screaming.

Fonda, Jane

38.

They are, as it were, train-bearers in the pageant of life, and hold a glass up to humanity, frailer than itself. We see ourselves at second-hand in them: they show us all that we are, all that we wish to be, and all that we dread to be. What brings the resemblance nearer is, that, as they imitate us, we, in our turn, imitate them. There is no class of society whom so many persons regard with affection as actors.

Hazlitt, William

39.

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

George, Boy

40.

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

41.

Acting is a matter of giving away secrets.

Barkin, Ellen

42.

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

43.

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

44.

More than in any other performing arts the lack of respect for acting seems to spring from the fact that every layman considers himself a valid critic.

Hagen, Uta

45.

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

Hepburn, Katharine

46.

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

Carrey, Jim

47.

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

Quinn, Anthony

48.

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

49.

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

50.

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

Davis, Bette